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Casey, Crime Photographer

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Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Empty Re: Casey, Crime Photographer

Post by greybelt 3/14/2020, 7:28 pm

Tough Guy was broadcast the same week when the news that the Anchor-Hocking sponsored broadcasts would be coming to a close. The end would come three weeks later. CBS was still negotiating at this time for sponsorship by Toni, maker of home permanent kits. CBS was prepared to run Casey as a sustaining feature if it all fell through. An upcoming blog will detail how the switch from A-H to Toni occurred. These are two clips announcing that the end was near.

1948-03-03 Canandaigua NY Daily Messenger
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-146

1948-03-03 Green Bay WI Press-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-147

Tough Guy is a basic Casey episode that has nothing to distinguish it in the storyline. The epilogue at the Blue Note, however, has Casey and Ann in talk that is more romantic in action than the usual arms-length flirty talk. Just three weeks ago (Key Witness), it seemed pretty clear that Ann was upset with the lack of attention paid to her, but it's all forgotten. That is, Alonzo Deen Cole may have forgotten all about it.

ADC continuity notes...
Clint Morris holds up the Sutter Ave. Theatre, and his girlfriend and partner in crime, Betty Summers, kills her boss, the theatre manager. Light is thrown on their crime when taxi driver, Izzy Goldfarb, reports to police a suspicious man in gray who asked to be driven past the Sutter Ave. theatre about three times, and after getting tough with him about paying his fare, gives Izzy a five-spot and tells him to forget that he ever saw him. While at the station, a report comes in of the holdup and murder at the theatre and the description points to Clint Morris, the man in gray. Police pick up Morris and while holding him for the murder, the owner of a drug- store at the corner of the theatre, tells police that he saw Morris at the same time as the murder with two other fellows, thus, establishing an alibi for Morris. Casey, realizing that Morris deliberately called attention to himself and made himself look guilty by his actions with the cab driver, decides that Morris might be working with the cashier, Betty Summers, since she was the only one who saw him. Casey goes to see Morris before he is released and tells him that he and Betty are becoming quite friendly, and that he is to see Betty again that night, hoping to make Morris angry enough to spill some information. He then goes to Betty's apartment with the same idea and tells her that Morris left broken-hearted girls all over the country, usually with their money. While at Betty's apartment, Morris comes in, as Casey had hoped, and furious because he thought Betty had played him for a sap, he tries to kill her. Police crash in as Betty and Morris tell enough to convict themselves of the crime.

2:27 Taxi driver stumbles over dialogue, recovers.

6:25 Casey is a little flirtations in his comments to Betty as he gets her to pose for some pictures. He tells Logan she's cute. This establishes that Morris gets jealous about the way other men look at her, which is important to the ending of the story.

8:30 Casey notices the layout of the theater and the possible escape route. 9:40 Casey notes how the sound of the crime movie being shown may have muffled the actual shooting. Some of the circumstances are piquing Casey's curiosity that it may have been an inside job.

10:49 Ethelbert calls down for Walter to bring coffee to Casey. No dialogue.

17:37 Casey starts to lay it on thick to Morris that he's enjoying Betty's company. He says "she's too easy to know." The adults in the audience knew what that was. The kids listening didn't. Casey was considered okay for families, and Cole wrote that way.

20:08 Casey tells Betty how smart Morris is to distance himself from his partner-in-crime. Then he plants the idea that Morris has been in other parts of the country and "loves them and leaves them." Sparks are bound to fly when they meet.

22:30 Morris and Summers start the dialogue that Casey hoped to kindle, and their crime is exposed. At  23:20 Logan, the police, and Casey barge in, and arrest them.

Cole using liked jealousy as a means to get suspects to turn against each other and admit their crimes. A similar one was used in 1947-08-14 The Chivalrous Gunman.

One of the more romantic discussions between Casey and Ann in the series is during the Blue Note epilogue. In explaining why the jealousy angle worked, 25:47 Ann tells Ethelbert that "Casey knows all about love... he learned from books." Similar comments can also be found in Chivalrous Gunman. The two of them start a flirtatious dialogue to kid Ethelbert. He says "I don't approve of spoofin' the... the tender passion" which gets a good chuckle from the audience. Then, for real, Casey and Ann head off together.

RadioGoldindex lists Joe Julian in the cast.

Casey 48-03-04 227 Tough Guy UPGRADE-2.mp3
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1948-03-04 Camden NJ Courier-Post
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-148

1948-03-04 Mason City IA Globe-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-149

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Post by greybelt 3/15/2020, 7:38 am

Fog seems all set to be a run of the mill program with a tired plot, weak dialogue, and poor direction. Then it redeems itself and turns for the better with and interesting twist and a romantic moment in the Blue Note epilogue. Wade through the first 17 minutes for the details of the plot: it's worth the wait.

Sometimes this episodes circulates as "The Fog" but the title based on ADC's notes is just the single word "Fog."

ADC continuity notes...
Ann Williams receives an anonymous letter telling her that an important news story is about to break at the estate of fabulously wealthy Willis J. Baldwin. A ball is to be held there late in the evening at which Mrs. Baldwin will wear her famous diamond necklace. The letter undoubtedly is a tip that someone is going to steal the diamonds. Casey and Ann crash the party with the excuse that they are doing a publicity job of the elaborate affair. It's a damp, dismal and foggy night. Casey recognized the butler as someone he's met before. The dinner guests include a French Count, Mrs. Baldwin's personal bodyguard, and Mr. & Mrs. Baldwin. The group adjourns to the living room for cocktails, when suddenly the lights go out. After much confusion, electricity is restored and Mrs. Baldwin realizes that her diamond necklace (which had been placed in a jewel box, on the table) is missing. Casey suddenly remembers where he'd seen the butler before - the butler is a big-time jewel thief who Casey had interviewed upon his release from prison. However, Casey feels certain that the butler has also recognized him, therefore, be wouldn't take the chance of lifting the diamond with Casey present. Casey's deduction is that someone else, knowing the Butler's past history, has stolen the diamonds knowing that the Butler would be blamed for it. Later the butler is found murdered. Casey begins to work fast and brings to light some startling events, leading up to the capture of the [ADC's final words are cut off on the copy of the document]

There is an error in the description: it was Ann who did the interview, not Casey.

1:47 A funny moment in the running gag with Walter opens the show. Ethelbert starts to yell down to Walter to bring up some more lemons. But Casey finishes the sentence by almost screaming "more lemons" much louder than Ethelbert did, to the befuddlement of the bartender. No dialogue for Walter here... he gets some later...

3:30 Ethelbert says the diamond necklace is worth "a million bucks," which is $12 million in 2020 US dollars.

3:40 Casey wonders why the letter was sent to Ann. "This kind of tip is seldom sent to a gal reporter," he says. Today, he would have ended up with a broken jaw after that comment, but it turns out that something Ann knows first hand from her reporting will be used by the perpetrator of this episode's attempted crime.

5:15 Casey wonders again why the letter was sent to Ann.

5:40 Casey's driving in the fog, and the fog horn at McBerney's Point can be heard. At 8:06, Mrs. Baldwin asks to close a door so the fog won't come it. It the listener doesn't know by now that fog plays a role in the story, there's no hope for them. So Cole mentions it again at 10:58.

6:24 Cough from the audience. It obviously can't be explained away in the scene, because Casey and Ann are in their car. Another one at 7:23.

8:10 Ann recognizes the butler, Fleming. He is new, not much experience, according to Mrs. Baldwin. Who hired him? Why?

11:10 The lights go out! They always seem to go out during a party when someone is wearing expensive uninsured diamonds. So of course, the diamonds are missing. Note the sound effect used for the lights going out... we learn it was not a light switch, it was a short circuit.

10:37 Ann recognizes the butler as Chris Masters, notorious jewel thief (seriously, does someone really use the word "notorious" in an excited utterance?... the weak dialogue is clumsily delivered here) and he gets away by jumping through the window (for once, the sound effects are better than the dialogue describing his jump and escape). He disappears into the fog, as one of the characters mentioned, in case you didn't know it's a foggy night already. Mrs. Baldwin is way too calm.

12:00 Casey's not all that excited about what just happened which makes Ann very confused. Masters did not get the diamonds. There was no switch for the lights, a cord was cut. Casey asks to go outside: he knows something and still has not told Ann what it is. He says he now knows why Ann was contacted with the tip, and not another reporter.

14:14 They're outside in the fog, and we hear the foghorn. Casey says he recognized Masters right from the beginning. Someone at the party realized Masters was at the party, planning to steal the diamonds. So they figured that they would steal the diamonds and Masters would get the blame. Ann was there as part of the plot because they knew she would spot him, for all to hear, as she had written a story about Masters "several years ago."

17:35 A surprise in the story that redeems the entire episode from being a tired plotline with sub-par writing and direction. When the lights went out, Casey grabbed the diamonds so they wouldn't be stolen! At 17:50 this gets a light laugh from some of the audience.

19:01 They hear gunshots in the distance... Tim has shot Masters. His clothes pockets were all ripped by someone searching for the diamonds. Masters was strangled, not shot. Tim was shooting at the person who killed Masters but did not realize it.

There is much confusion around what's happened, much finger-pointing about who did what.

21:35 Mr. Baldwin slips and says "Chris Masters"... incriminating himself to arrange the theft of the diamonds. One of Tim's shots nicked Baldwin's coat sleeve.

22:45 Tim tries to restrain Baldwin after Casey tells him to look for the diamonds in Baldwin's pockets. In the struggle, Casey slips the diamonds into his pocket. Ann says he framed him, but Casey says it's okay because Baldwin attempted to frame the Count, and now the person who actually committed the crime will be charged with it.

25:10 In the epilogue at the Blue Note, we learn Baldwin confessed to the police. Casey was lucky, because what he did would never have held up in court. Baldwin needed the money because of bad stock transactions, and thought if it was "stolen" he could fence the diamonds for the money he needed. He felt this was his best option because he knew his wife would never agree to selling it, and he also did not want to admit the financial quandary he caused for himself. Baldwin thought his wife was in love with the Count, and that's why he wanted to frame him. We also learn that police investigation showed Baldwin was not the most faithful of husbands.

26:25 One of the more romantic scenes in the series occurs next. After the banter about the evening's incident, Ann says "The fog is entirely gone... it's a nice night to be outside... what are we doing here?... we're going Casey." They've already left the Blue Note by the time Ethelbert gets back from answering the phone. Ethelbert yells to Walter "Where did Casey and Miss Williams go?" Walter yells back "Out!" Ethelbert asks "Out?" and Walter replies again "Out!" Frustrated, Ethelbert says to Walter "bring up some more lemons!"

Cole seems to be turning on the romance spigot the past couple of episodes... it is possible he was thinking that the end of the A-H sponsorship would mean the end of the series and wanted to leave listeners with a warm sense that Casey and Ann's relationship ends up happily ever after.

Casey 48-03-11 228 Fog UPGRADE.mp3
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1948-03-11 Mason City IA Globe-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-150

1948-03-11 Akron OH Beacon Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-151



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Post by greybelt 3/15/2020, 4:54 pm

Murder in Black and White is the next to last Anchor-Hocking episode. It's a bit complicated, but it is an above average and enjoyable episode. It's likely that Cole used a well-known local landmark as the inspiration for the locale of the story. The episode has an extra long epilogue, leaving no time for any flirty dialogue.

ADC continuity notes...
On an early Spring morning we find Casey and Ann in a wooded glen of a vast city park, where only a few hours earlier, Tug Loftis, a local pug, had been shot to death. A book of matches from the Briarwald Casino, a disreputable roadhouse, is their only clue. About a year before, the Casino reported a robbery of a large amount of money, but when the police arrived the owners, Jake Salwin and his cousin Lew, denied it. Later Casey obtained a picture of a man with a gun leaning over the still body of Loftis and discovers that the man is a blackmailer by the name of Max Treedy. Casey and Ann go to Treedy's apartment and find him dead and the place in disorder, Again, their only clue is a book if matches from the Briarwald Casino. They go to the Casino and learn that Lew Salwin had stolen the money and that Max Treedy had been blackmailing him for a year. Becoming tired of paying Treedy, Lew decides to frame him by killing Loftis. The story comes to a thrilling climax with Casey capturing the killer and so putting an end to another life of crime.

"Pug" is slang for boxer. It's derived from Latin, pugna, meaning a fight, or battle. It's the reason why boxers are known as "pugilists." The word "pugnacious" is another that comes from it.

4:12 Ethelbert asks Walter to prepare a drink for Mr. Snodgrass, "one of his specials," with a little piece of pineapple in it. No answer from Walter. Snodgrass is obviously a regular customer, but this is the first recording we have that mentions him. There's a good chance the drink is a "Park Avenue Cocktail," a version of gin martini.

5:33 Casey gets a call at the bar from Bill Shapiro, "Shap," who was a main character in 1948-01-29 The Piggy Bank Robbery of just a few weeks prior. There's someone with a tip for Casey waiting back at the office.

6:15 Mrs. McCluskey has a tip for Casey that describes what she says "evidence of a murder... in black and white," but she wants to be paid for it. She asks for $100 ($1200 in 2020 dollars), and Casey gives it. There's a picture sent to her address, and it shows the body of Loftis and his killer. That is, presumed killer...

9:00 The letter arrived at McCluskey's house in the "morning mail." The Post Office did have twice-daily mail delivery in many cities until April 17, 1950; some businesses had delivery four times a day!

9:30 Casey and Ann figure out that the handwriting on the envelope was misread because of the peculiar way the numbers are written. Once they looked up Max Treedy's name in the phone book, the address made sense. They later find him murdered in his apartment.

15:25 Casey finds another matchbook from the Casino. The kitchenette in Treedy's apartment is set up like a darkroom, which is where he developed the films used in his blackmail scheme. Casey takes a pen from the apartment... that pen is important.

17:22 Cough from the audience.

19:30 Casey sees a note in Lew's office that is the same style of handwriting on the envelope that was mis-delivered. It turns out that the pen was hallow and had a film negative that showed Lew committing the robbery. Treedy was using that image to blackmail Lew.

21:30 Jake comes into the office having overheard Lew's explanation to Casey about how he stole the money ($50,000, which is $600,000 in 2020 US dollars). Jake shoots Lew... but he wasn't dead... and Lew shoots and kills Jake! Casey now knows what really happened, and that the photo of the murder... was not what really happened, but was staged!

24:55 The epilogue at the Blue Note clears up a lot of details. Lew died, but he offered details in a deathbed confession. Treedy was a bartender at the Briarwald, and learned Lew was stealing from Jake. Lew learned that Treedy was skimming from the cash register and told Jake. Jake beat up Treedy, so Treedy was upset that Lew ratted on him. That's when Treedy got a picture of Lew taking money from the safe so he could blackmail him for big money. That got Lew angry, so he figured a plot to get back at Treedy.

Lew set up a meeting in the park to pay the blackmail. But Lew met Pug in the park first, and killed him. Treedy arrived at the park, and not expecting to see Pug, especially his dead body, he stands over him and pulls his gun in case the shooter is still around. Lew got his own blackmail picture: he hid himself with a camera and snapped a picture of Treedy, gun in hand, standing over Pug's body. Lew took the picture using a black light bulb designed for night photography; this mean that there was no flash that would reveal his presence at the scene. Lew went to develop the picture and mailed it to Treedy, but his odd handwriting of numbers caused it to go to the wrong address. His plan was to exchange the blackmail pictures they each had, therefore ending his blackmail payments because each had something incriminating on the other. Since Treedy had never received the print, Lew became concerned that he would still be blackmailed, so he tried to beat Treedy into giving up the picture, but Treedy resisted, and ended up dead. Had Treedy lived, and been arrested for the murder of Pug which he did not commit, he may have told the whole story of Lew's dealings to the police. But Casey found the picture hidden in the pen... and despite the danger of confronting Lew and then Jake and Lew shooting each other, the case (and its three murders) is explained.

26:34 Cotsworth clears his throat! That was a lot of dialogue for the Blue Note re-cap.

27:07 Treedy was a bartender... so Ethelbert is so upset about his behavior demeaning the profession that he wants to report "that guy to our local and have him thrown out of our union!"... Casey and Ann have to remind him that he's dead.

Casey 48-03-18 229 Murder in Black and White UPGRADE.mp3
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As the A-H sponsorship expired, the number and nature of newspaper mentions decreased. They will never be the same again with the change in sponsorship, budgets, and the shift of dollars to television.

1948-03-18 Mason City IA Globe-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-153

1948-03-18 WI Capital Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-152

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It is likely that "Briarwald Casino" is Parkway Casino of Tuckahoe, NY, which Cole would have known quite well. The building is still there but is now an office building with several apartments. It can be seen from the Bronx River Parkway, a road which Cole would travel often when he lived in Mount Vernon and later in Scarsdale. The Casino had a history, with a reputation as FDR's favorite watering hole when he was in New York politics, serving as governor. He gave a presidential campaign speech there in 1932. The Casino was also known for the card games that were there, and it is claimed that bootlegger and mobster Dutch Schultz was a regular customer. Parkway Casino would later be used for small exhibitions, family and business parties. It had a thriving wedding business at one time. For a while, the restaurant in the building was "Borderwick's" which Cole contrived into "Briarwald."


Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Parkwa10

Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Parkwa12

Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Parkwa13

The sign for Borderwick's can be seen in this picture.
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Parkwa14

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Post by bojim1 3/16/2020, 2:40 am

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Post by greybelt 3/16/2020, 6:25 am

An update has been made to the opening paragraph of the post about the episode of Earned Reward at the original post [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] It corrects a comment about the originally scheduled for this date "Hot Ice" which I thought was never produced, but I learned otherwise this weekend. The replaced paragraph is listed here for convenience...

Earned Reward, a well-done Casey script and performance, was produced earlier in the series, on 1946-01-07. This appears to be a last minute substitution for a script titled "Hot Ice," a Cole script that was broadcast on 1944-01-15 as "Casey Compounds a Felony" and also on 1945-08-15 as "Hot Ice." The prior two weeks had scripts by Milton Kramer and Albert Barker, and the week before that was an adapted Witch's Tale script. It is assumed that Cole was away on vacation. For some reason, "Hot Ice" was replaced by this Earned Reward script from nearly two years before, during its unsponsored period. This means that a repeated script was used to replace a repeated script!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Blind Justice
is the last of the Anchor-Hocking series. All that's announced at the end is that there will be a new sponsor next week. This is the last time we will hear Tony Marvin as the announcer for the series. This is a good episode that relies on Casey's relationships in the criminal side of life for a satisfactory solution to the crime that is definitely illegal. It's "blind justice" because justice is delivered but could not bear to see how it all happened.

ADC continuity notes... (typos in original)
Milt Havens, a shrewd but generally disliked criminal lawyer who has acquired a reputation as a double-crosser shows Capt. Logan and Casey an annonymous letter that threatens his life. Later Haven's wealthy wife, Doris, an ardent social welfare worker who is as greatly respected as her husband is detested, is shot to death by a gunman whose purpose, it appears, was to kill Havens. Havens, in turn, kills the gunman. And the latter is identified as the writer of the threatening letter. Casey is a witness to the double killing and, although the evidence seems conclusive that Mrs. Havens died as the result of a shot intended for her husband while Havens staunchly attempted to defend her, the photographer becomes stubbornly convinced that Havens planned and brought about her murder. To secure proof of his theory seems hopeless. Apparently the perfect crime has, at last, been committed and Casey becomes bitterly convinced that Justice is truly blind. But forces that his investigation put in motion suddenly gather speed and unanticipated direction. The shrewd attorney who cheated the law finds himself face to face with a grim Justice whose eyes are very keen and whose grasp can't be denied.

The show opens with Casey and Logan playing gin rummy, and Casey about to lose. "Figure up what I owe you, Canfield..." is what Casey says. Canfield was a famous gambler who helped create the concept of "resort casino." [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  He died in 1914.

9:55 Mrs. Havens is shot -- this is the kind of chaos that would have made the crime in Fog more believable.

10:40 The dying killer tries to mutter something to Casey and fails, but his lips seemed to form the words "double-cross." Casey

12:55 Ethelbert is talking to Grace on the phone, saying he'll look for something. We have no clue what it is that they're talking about.

14:08 A cough in the audience. Since they're at the Blue Note, it can be natural. Unlike when there was someone coughing in Casey's car in Fog. The ones at 17:26 and 21:00 is not so well placed.

The actor who plays "Fats Everett" played Sergeant Pinelli in Tough Guy a few episodes ago. When collectors listen to episodes in rapid succession over a short time, we notice things like this. For listeners who tuned in once a week, they tended not to catch on to such things.

Fats helps Casey figure out that Milt Havens staged the attempt on his life that was actually designed to murder his wife and get her fortune.

20:28 Cotsworth stumbles slightly on a line, and handles it so naturally, it seems like natural speech.

21:48 Fats visits the group at the Blue Note. 22:10 He invites Casey and Ann to his new restaurant. At 21:15 the actor nearly flubs Ann's last name. They decide to go when he implies it will be worth their while in terms of solving the case. It turns out that the mayor has reserved a table and there might be a story. Fats asks Casey what time it is, and he says they are the same. Why would Fats do that? Shortly after, Milt Havens is walking out of the restaurant.

24:10 There's machine gun fire (bad sound effect) and a car speeding away. Before Casey can snap a picture of the getaway car, Fats bumps him so he can't snap a photo, and the car gets away, but Havens is dead. Casey realizes that the mayor being at the restaurant might have been just a ruse to get him to the restaurant to see the shooting of Havens.

26:15 In the Blue Note epilogue, Casey suspects that Fats arranged or assisted in the hit of Havens, but there is nothing he can do about it, and nothing that he wants to do about it. And it did turn out that the mayor was there, as Fats promised.

Tony Marvin's tenure with Casey is over, but his career as an announcer would continue in many assignments, the longest term being with Arthur Godfrey. Future announcers for Casey will be Bill Cullen for the Toni series who became better known form hosting 1950s and 1960s game shows and Ken Roberts for the Philip Morris series, who is known to OTR fans for his work as an announcer for The Shadow (and being father of actor Tony Roberts, a favorite of Woody Allen; Ken Roberts makes an appearance in Allen's Radio Days at the end of the movie in the rooftop scene). Bob Hite would handle the revival series of the mid-1950s.

Bernard Lenrow (Logan) still receives no credit in the program. It might have been nice to have the whole cast mentioned at the end of the A-H series.

1948-03-19 CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-158

Casey 48-03-25 230 Blind Justice (final Anchor-Hocking) UPGRADE.mp3
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1948-03-25 Dayton OH Journal Herald
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-157

1948-03-25 Mason City IA Globe-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-156

1948-03-25 South Bend IN Tribune
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-155

1948-03-25 Wisconsin State Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-154

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next post will not have a show link but will have background about the switch from A-H to Toni.

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Post by greybelt 3/16/2020, 5:38 pm

It seemed early for a renewal, but at the beginning of the year, CBS renewed Casey despite not having a sponsorship renewal from Anchor-Hocking. The company was happy with the ratings for Casey but they were not pleased with how much money they were paying for the show. It was not delivering the uptick in sales that they wanted, especially compared to what they were paying for Hobby Lobby, the program they stopped sponsoring to do Casey. CBS on the other hand, knew that Casey could draw ratings, so having it as a sustainer was a good idea... but their renewal was also a sign to prospective advertisers that CBS believed in the show, and a new sponsor would be getting access to an established and successful property with a large audience.

1948-01-13 Wisconsin State Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-159

CBS was prepared to run Casey as a sustaining program just like it was before Anchor-Hocking. That would likely mean a cut in budgets for production factors. The A-H series was lush compared to what the program was like before then. And it seems pretty clear that Cole made some extra efforts for the scripts, too, so that money was being spread around quite a bit to everyone involved. Most of the crime shows were  sponsored by products considered as male-focused. The A-H sponsorship always seemed a bit odd, and the idea that Toni, for home permanents, would sponsor a crime show really seems odder than the A-H choice. If A-H was unhappy with what became a full-family targeted crime show, how would Toni get a different result that they would be happy with?

Toni was looking for a detective program with Van Heflin. The program was never described in the press, and it seemed to have never reached the air. You have the sense that they were looking for a star, especially a rising movie star, who might have broad appeal and provide good public relations. You almost get the sense that they "settled" for Casey.

1948-03-11 Pittsburgh PA Press
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-165

Billboard 1948-03-13
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo19

Note the name in this clip: Don Nathanson. He was an ad executive who wrote one of the Suspense "one hit wonders," A Guy Gets Lonely. He would later become a top investor and executive in broadcast and cable industries. Toni must have been making incredible amounts of money for them to spend over $40 million in 2020 US dollars on broadcast advertising.

Billboard 1948-03-20
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo21

The Van Heflin series idea was still around, and it would have kicked a sustaining version of Casey to a less attractive time slot. This newspaper clip says Toni rejected the Casey series.

1948-03-19 Cumberland MD Evening Times
from Paul Luther's syndicated column about radio
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-166

For whatever reason, perhaps just a negotiating ploy, Toni decided to run with Casey and keep its premium time slot.

1948-03-21 Quad-City IA Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-160

1948-03-22 Cumberland MD Evening Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-161

The press release announcing the new Toni sponsorship was mailed the day after the final A-H broadcast.

1948-03-26 CBS Press Release
Click image to see in full
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-163

Someone liked Casey in Hollywood. Despite the sponsorship problems, they paid for the rights to make a movie. It never happened.

Billboard 1948-03-27
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo16

The first episode did not get much promotion. Note how this newspaper information is generic... and Ann is described as "luscious"!
1948-04-01 Mason City IA Globe-Gazette
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-167

Sam Chase, the curmudgeonly reviewer at Billboard, did not like the first episode. The line in his review that sums it all up is "It was all rather futile." Casey under Toni lightened up the scripts and the commercials were rather awful. The episode was Sleeping Dogs Awake and was scripted by Cole.

Billboard 1948-04-10
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo18

Toni wanted to advertise on TV, but they had no money left. That would come later. TV was still not available around the country, just in some major metropolitan areas, and few families had sets.

Billboard 1948-04-24
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo17

The entire Toni fiasco ran ~70 weeks, about 16 months, before they wised up. Then Casey got a more appropriate sponsor, Philip Morris, which cancelled its sponsorship of Philip Morris Playhouse in favor of the less expensive Casey. Interestingly, that final year of PMP was produced by William Spier, who made PMP much like Suspense, including the use of some Suspense scripts. Once Philip Morris took over, the scripts returned to the usual excitement, but the big budgets for production were already leaving radio. It all just made one long for that special time when A-H's sponsorship turned Casey into a blockbuster hit.

There are only five episodes from the Toni series. The first one that survives is eight months after the new sponsorship. One of them, Scene of the Crime is one of my favorites because Ethelbert has a big role. These are the five episodes:
48-11-25 Holiday
49-01-20 Action Photograph
49-03-10 The Scene of the Crime
49-05-05 The Wolverine
49-05-19 Cupid Is a Killer

1948-11-12 Los Angeles CA Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-164


Last edited by greybelt on 3/17/2020, 5:42 am; edited 5 times in total

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Post by Rearle1 3/16/2020, 7:03 pm

This is a fascinating story being told. Of all the ins-and-outs and radio terminology we've been through, the first thing I have had to Google to find out what it means to my modern brain is "home permanents"! I had imagined they were selling closets.
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Post by greybelt 3/17/2020, 5:54 am

Holiday is the first circulating show of the Toni run. Toni started sponsorship about eight months earlier. The first noticeable change is Bill Cullen as the announcer. The Toni run was quite a departure. Where the Anchor-Hocking run was targeted to families, the Toni run was targeted to women. The in-show commercials are rather awful. The stories were still in the usual Casey style, though they seemed less violent, and had fewer characters with dialogue. The spark was no longer there.

ADC continuity notes...
"Biff", a reformed safe cracker, is threatened by his old gang who want him to pull just one more job for them. When Biff stays straight and turns down their offer of $5000, they plant a hot gun in Biff's store and threaten to reveal its presence to the authorities. Biff is caught in a tricky double squeeze. If he refuses the job, the police will be led to the incriminating gun. It he tries to get rid or the weapon, the gang will tip the police to nab him in the act. Biff's holiday seems as dark as a Thanksgiving turkey's future until Casey and Ann Williams do some very fancy wishbone work with the thugs.

The gang's offer to Biff Connors is $60,000 in 2020 US dollars.

2:35 There's a $1.75 special for Thanksgiving at the Blue Note -- $21 in 2020 US dollars

It's pretty clear that Casey and Ann's relationship may have deepened as they are spending Thanksgiving together with big plans for the day. We know Casey has no family, but that Ann does. Her family is at a distance.

4:01 Toni's ad directed to women is straightforward. It does feel like an ad one might hear on a soap opera, not a detective program. At this time, Toni was also sponsoring Nora Drake.

After the ad, Biff and Casey have a very long dialogue that fills in the story. This is a sign of smaller budget as there are no foundational scenes with some of the characters mentioned. There could have been a scene with a gang member actually offering the money to Biff, and also his discovery of the gun. This is one of the ways Cole "softened" the show -- describing violent or threatening acts by words alone without presenting or staging them.

10:48 Casey's at the Blue Note apologizing for leaving her there all afternoon and missing their movie date. Again, no action, just description of past events and people.

13:50 Walter tells Casey he has a phone call from Biff -- doubling by one of the actors -- a much different interpretation of the character than prior episodes.

16:00 Suddenly, Ethelbert starts singing. Bill Cullen arrives at the bar for the commercial break. Ethelbert briefly explains where Casey and Ann just went. Cullen starts reading the ad copy with Chittison in the background. Ethelbert is in disbelief that more than a million women used the Toni product. He says "that's a lotta women!" The staging of the commercial seems awkward. Comedy programs did an interesting job integrating commercials into their dialogue, with the best example being the Lucky Strike commercials in the Benny program. In the Anchor-Hocking series, the commercials were distinct and separate.

20:28 Casey gets an idea to help Biff. It came after he and Ann were discussing a western movie they saw.

Biff is being terrorized by gangsters, yet not a single one has been heard in the story. 20:58 Casey tells Biff what to do when he cracks the safe and to get into the getaway car's back seat and to brace himself.

23:35 Casey's ruse works... the gangsters are in the car, obviously knocked out... so they have no lines of dialogue!

24:40 A Toni singing commercial promoting their shampoo.

25:30 Ethelbert apologizes that there are no turkey dinners left, so they're basically getting leftovers because the cooks left hours before. Ann says it was a "swell day" because of accomplished. Casey is appreciative and says "you're a pal, Annie." This is another situation of sloppy continuity as the word "pal" was contentious in a prior episode in the A-H era. Ann did not want to be treated like a "pal" then.

An entire mob is wiped out and brought to justice... without a single word of dialogue for them.

Captain Logan (Bernard Lenrow) is not in the episode. This episode, broadcast live on Thanksgiving, could have been written with the purpose of minimizing the cast so actors could spend time with families... and perhaps there was a pay differential for holiday assignments that was avoided. Logan was also missing in the prior year's Thanksgiving episode After Turkey -- The Bill. That episode had a police character; this did not.

Bill Cullen is the announcer. I remember him as a very likeable TV game show host. He had an interesting life after being stricken with polio as a child, serving in WW2, and being involved in numerous TV shows.
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cullen
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Casey 48-11-25 264 Holiday (earliest circulating Toni) UPGRADE.mp3
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1948-11-25 Richmond VA Times Dispatch
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-168

1948-11-25 St Louis MO Globe Democrat
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1948-169

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Post by greybelt 3/17/2020, 8:02 pm

Action Photograph is one best example of how different Casey storylines became under the Toni sponsorship with the emergence of "nice gangsters" by the end of the program. In the episode, Casey commits a convincing photographic fraud, with skill of the kind that would not be available until decades later with computers with Adobe Photoshop! And that fraud is combined with his own blackmail scheme to help a friend reclaim his ex-fiance from the arms of another. This could be the worst Casey episode ever, but we haven't written about Thunderbolt (1949-11-10) yet.

This is the last new episode that was not a repeated script found in the Casey series in decades -- it started to circulate about a dozen years ago. What did OTRdom and Casey fans do so wrong that we needed to be punished with this episode?

ADC continuity notes...
Casey is torn between boyhood loyalties and his duty as a newspaperman when he is assigned to cover a gangster killing in the neighborhood where he grew up. Although Casey knows who the murderer is, as do most of his former neighbors, he decides to remain silent rather than be judged a stool pigeon by his old friends. His mind is changed, however, when he learns that the murder suspect has double-crossed one of his best pals. Setting out to get evidence to nail the killer, Casey sets a trap which nearly snaps shut on him.

1:56 Bill Cullen asks "Does your loveliness depend on the weather?"

The story starts with the murder of gangster John Habano. Casey and Ann follow the investigation. There are gangsters in the story whom Casey knew from childhood. "Silk Farrell" is one, and Alan Bancroft is the other. Older gangster Tony Angelo was a friend of Casey's father. Silk is suspected of being Habano's killer.

Casey once sang tenor in a youth singing quartet group with Silk, Frankie Pizarro, and Gus Hoffman. Everyone except Casey went into Silk's gang.

9:56 There's a fight in the bar between Silk and Alan Bancroft over Silk's girlfriend. Constance Maxwell, the "society dame with all the dough." Constance was Bancroft's fiance. Silk knocks Bancroft out. Casey drives Bancroft home.

Al spills his guts to Casey, and Casey develops a scheme to help Al retrieve the affections of Constance once more.

13:50 Bill Cullen catches up with Ethelbert who is brushing up on his boxing techniques behind the bar. After Ethelbert says how attractive Constance was, Bill says she was probably a Toni user. Ethelbert does the usual "that's a lotta women" tagline. Yuck.

16:00 Casey visits Tony who reluctantly tells him about the murder. Casey wants to be careful about protecting Tony from being suspected as a snitch. Based on what Casey learns, he gets enough information to fake a picture of the getaway car with Silk's gang inside after the killing. In the 1940s, this required an incredible amount of skill to assemble this many images and make it look like it was a real shot. It's not credible. It's hard enough to do it in Photoshop to be convincing. Cole relies on the lack of technical photographic knowledge of the audience that it's possible to do such work and have it be undetectable.

20:00 Casey "blackmails" Silk into letting Al beat him up in front of Constance. If this is starting to sound like the gimmick of the Self-Made Hero episode, you're right. That was teenagers. This is gangsters acting like teenagers. Al slugs Silk and all is well. Al and Constance leave and she puts the engagement ring back on. But wait, there's more.

22:30 Silk and Casey have an argument over the picture, and he threatens Casey with a gun. Silk's guys enter the room. Stereotypical lines from the gang members are delivered like "I'd like to shake hands only it gets kind of difficult when I got a tommy gun in my mitt, like now" and "pardon my sawed-off shotgun." Silk lays it on think that Casey is going to be killed and his body thrown in the river. Silk shoots... a blank... to get back to Casey for his little blackmail scheme. The gang has a good laugh over the gag. They all start singing "Roll Out the Barrell."

26:58 The Blue Note epilogue has a lot of information, but it can't save the episode. Casey's not there because he's home resting his voice since the gang had a full night of singing. At 27:27 we learn that the gang members of the quartet were all killed in their car in revenge for the killing for Habano. Ann says the police nabbed the killers, but she does not name who they were.

Great Grandfather's Rent Receipt was a bad episode, but that was adapted from Witch's Tale. This one, Action Photograph, is a bad episode all by itself, created from scratch, just for this very special day.

The episode shows how the Toni sponsorship changed the show for the worse. The core story is about two men fighting for the affection of the same woman. The dialogue in the final scene is awful, and the idea of the old quartet back together to sing seems more like a bad high school play than a big high-profile crime series. The stories are sanitized of even mild violence and devoid of real tension. Violent acts are referred to in dialogue after they have happened. Perhaps real tension would make the listener's hair curl without Toni, and that's why they avoided it.

"Silk Farrell" is an interesting choice of name because Staats Cotsworth was one of the actors who played the lead in Front Page Farrell, a radio soap opera about a newspaper reporter. The serial was produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, producers of Mr. Keen and over one hundred other series over the decades.
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Casey 49-01-20 272 Action Photograph.mp3

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1949-01-20 Bakersfield CA Californian
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-151

1949-01-20 Rochester NY Democrat & Chronicle
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-109


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Post by bojim1 3/18/2020, 1:47 am

Thanks!!!

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Post by greybelt 3/18/2020, 8:13 am

Scene of the Crime is the best of the scripts from the Toni era. It includes a bigger and funnier role for Ethelbert that doesn't disappoint. Ethelbert is considering his future career and he decides to take a correspondence course in detection. In the past, Ethelbert admitted his lack of prowess in academic matters, never having been past McGuffy's Fourth Reader, so this is a big step for him. Logan and Casey are stupefied when Ethelbert's involvement works for the better as he buffoons his way into insights into the case and identifies the murderer! It's a good program that is a nice diversion from the regular style of the series.

The title of the episode is "Scene of the Crime" and has sometimes circulated as "The Scene of the Crime."

An interesting aspect of this broadcast is that it is not by Cole, but by Harry Ingram, credited at the conclusion of the broadcast (28:07). The ADC continuity notes identify it as a Cole script, likely a mistake of habitually typing his name over and over again in the document. If it wasn't Ingram, a mistake like that would have been caught in rehearsals. He was a writer for The Big Story, The Shadow, Kate Smith, and other programs, including the TV version of Tales of Tomorrow. He died in 1952, only 40 years old. Ingram captures the essence of Ethelbert very well and delivers some funny moments throughout the script.
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ADC continuity notes...
Casey's search for a murderer becomes a little confused when Ethelbert, the Blue Note's bartender, steps up to give him a helping hand in "Scene of the Crime." Having just completed a correspondence course in crime detection, Ethelbert begs to be allowed to join Casey when the police call him to photograph a murder scene - and perhaps identify the victim. Casey gives up, but "Sherlock" Ethelbert immediately recognizes the dead man as a former numbers racketeer. To trap the killer, Ethelbert returns to the scene of the crime later that night - just as he expects the murderer to do. The ensuing drama, confusion and violence which befalls the tyro detective in pursuit of his criminal nearly succeeds in ending both Ethelbert's and Casey's sleuthing careers.

1:23 Ethelbert says he chose a detection course because he wanted to be like Casey. He didn't choose a photography course because he thinks Casey is a lousy photographer!

2:09 Ethelbert's third course is about identifying corpses, so of course he goes to the crime scene... and then a Toni commercial interrupts...

4:18 Ethelbert takes over the crime scene by telling everyone to get out of the way... Logan is miffed, and even mutters that he doesn't really like having Ann at crime scenes.

5:58 Despite Ethelbert's systematic approach, he doesn't know whose corpse it is... but he suddenly recognizes him as a regular visitor to the bar, Dave Wilson. Later, we learn that Wilson is a numbers runner (7:48) for Mugs Benson.

6:45 Ethelbert says he has to stay on the case because Logan will use "employ archaic methods and proceed from false hypotenuse."

9:55 The line in the correspondence course that drives the episode is that "the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime" where they will find a "shadowy figure creepin' about in the moonlight searchin' for telltale clues to remove." So of course, that's where he and Ann go.

11:05 Ethelbert finds the "shadowy figure creepin' about in the moonlight searchin' for telltale clues to remove." Ann asks what they should do. He says "detain the fugitive until such time as such help can be... obtained as obtained." Ann wishes Casey was there. Ethelbert asks what Casey would do. Ann tells him he would sneak up from behind and slug him... so he does and knocks him out... and it turns out to be Casey! (12:09)

12:57 A Toni ad with a variant of the tagline "that's a lotta... lotta women."

15:12 Logan uses the term "hawkshaw" to describe Casey. That's an obsolete term for "detective," and not always complimentary. Hawkshaw was a detective character in a late 1800s play that remained popular through the early 1900s and led to some motion pictures [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] The name was used in a humorous comic strip, Hawkshaw the Detective, that lasted through most of the 1940s.

18:15 We meet Buddy Wilson, younger brother of Dave. Buddy will turn out to be the murderer. 19:25 Ethelbert looks at Buddy's profile and he says 19:54 that Buddy's the murderer because Ethelbert studied Buddy's "contours." Casey and Ann don't believe it as she calls him "that blue-eyed blond-haired little cherub... he's got a baby's face." Ethelbert stole the cigarette box from the house because it will be "lousy" with Buddy's fingerprints. Today, "lousy" just means bad and its original meeting of being infested with lice is long past. Ethelbert's usage draws more from the "infested" meaning, unlike the way he used it when he said Casey was a lousy photographer earlier in the episode.

20:38 Casey says he was not going to investigate Buddy Wilson, and then Ethelbert goes on a funny rant that begins with Casey "ignoring justice." Casey says he'll investigate only to keep Ethelbert quiet.

After Casey investigates and Buddy's background turns out to be spotless and all of the fingerprints on the cigarette box turn out to be Ethelbert's, the bartender is very discouraged.

22:35 Buddy Wilson comes to the bar. He wants the cigarette box back. Ethelbert could not open it because it had a trick locking mechanism. Ethelbert drops the box -- and there's money in it, $10,000 ($120,000 in 2020 US dollars). It's the money Buddy got for killing his brother. Now that Ethelbert knows, Buddy says he has to kill him, too.

24:20 Herman the pianist calls Casey (no dialogue, just Casey's side of the conversation) and tells him that Ethelbert left the bar with Buddy.

25:40 Casey and Logan go back to the spot where Dave Wilson's body was found (the original scene of the crime where all criminals return to, of course). Logan shoots Buddy from a distance before he had a chance to shoot Ethelbert. Ethelbert faints.

27:00 Back at the Blue Note, Ethelbert says he's not completing the detection course and has selected a course about wildflowers instead.

Correspondence courses were common at the time of this episode. Much of listening audience was familiar with the concept. Some courses were famous. A mail-delivered piano course turned out to be one of the seminal moments of the emerging direct mail industry. The late copywriter, John Caples, became a legend in advertising, still honored today, with his famous headline "They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play..." [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Correspondence courses were serious business starting in the late 1880s. The courses allowed returning WW2 veterans to re-establish their lives at work and with family, while advancing their education with support of the GI Bill. It has since become known as "distance learning."

1949-03-01 CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-152

Casey 49-03-10 279 Scene of the Crime UPGRADE.mp3
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1949-03-10 Bakersfield CA Californian
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-153

1949-03-10 Tulare CA Advance-Register
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-154

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had mentioned that Alonzo Deen Cole had some familiarity with guns and that he was arrested for a domestic issue related to his ownership. A month later, the charges were dismissed. The reporting makes light of the incident and Cole's involvement in crime program scripting. It is always interesting that it was common to print the actual addresses of persons in the news. Cole had since moved from his Mount Vernon apartment to a house in Scarsdale (in the town of Greenburgh), a few miles north away, and still convenient by train to Manhattan.

1949-02-26 NY Daily News
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-155

1949-03-23 NY Daily News
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-156

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

John Dietz was a long-time staff producer at CBS in New York. This backgrounder was released by CBS highlighting some of his accomplishments.

1949-03-10 CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-157

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Post by greybelt 3/20/2020, 7:38 am

The Wolverine is a Toni episode that is more like the style of the A-H series. Many of the Toni episodes had a second plotline that dealt with relationships, but this episode is flirt-free. It's a better than average episode with a comparatively simple storyline. It is an entertaining comic-book detective style plot with some amusing overacted thugs and upper class characterizations of a competitive reporter and a college professor that clearly place Casey and Ann as ordinary people. Cole's casting of suspicion on the reporter, Foster, is much too obvious and by now we know how typical this is of the Cole's strategy, but making him the hero is chuckle-worthy in the end.

This is another episode where Cole uses the theme of a psychologist studying criminal behavior by rubbing shoulders with them, like the popular 1938 movie The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse. Cole also used it in 1947-08-07 Death In Lovers Lane.

ADC continuity notes...
Casey attempts to solve a case concerning a triple killing in this script titled "The Wolverine". An anonymous phone call tips off the cops that Bobo Gusek, a gangster, and his two bodyguards, have been slain by a hail of .45 bullets. The bodies have no money on them, but beside them lies a crude sketch of an animal - a cross between a weasel and a bear - a wolverine.

Cole could have gotten the name "Bobo" from Bobo Newsome, a major league pitcher at the time.

4:10 This is one of the few episodes where the city desk editor, Burke, has a speaking role.

9:05 Competitive reporter Foster says he will make pencil sketches from the photos he took. Is he the Wolverine? Cole plays up the class difference between newspaper readership. In New York, it was the NY Times compared to the Daily News, in Boston it was the Globe compared to the Herald. The NY Daily News may have been what Cole had in mind as the model for Casey's employer The Morning Express as it was promoted as "New York's Picture Newspaper," using more photos than its rivals.

One of the newspaper clippings identifies Jesse White appearing in the episode. He appears at about 12:00 as "Manny," one of the members of gangster Joe Schuster. He is not credited in the program; it is likely that White's agent or family reported his appearance to the newspaper as a "home town kid does good" story. White was a well-known bit player for decades but became well- and affectionately known for being the lonely Maytag repairman in commercials that highlighted the product's reliability.
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15:25
The mid-show Toni commercial is used to update listeners who may have lost track of the story or tuned in late.

Dr. Avon, the professor who is studying the criminals, is another way Cole plays out class differences. College professors were "mysterious" to most of the public in that only a small percentage of the population went to college, even for just a few courses. Psychology was also a strange and mysterious topic that radio writers could always weave into their stories to capture listener interest. There was a sense that psychologists knew things others didn't and had insights into people that could be used to manipulate them.

22:32 Cotsworth has some odd pauses here. Not sure what was going on, perhaps he had to swallow to clear his throat or something, or if it was supposed to be a pause to indicate he was thinking.

24:48 Dr. Avon is the Wolverine. He walks into Casey and Ann's discussion about his "invisible ink" notes written between the lines of his diary. This is still a popular kid's home science project that uses lemon juice. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

24:51 "Yeah, we see the .45 in your hand, Doc" is the way Cole tells us there's a gun in the scene.
Foster saves the day by hitting Avon in the head with his... camera! Really? Cameras were pretty bulky in those days, and it could be done. The cameras that news photographers used were heavy and durable. Studio photographers did not place the same kind of demands for portability and rugged handling on their equipment.

Casey 49-05-05 287 The Wolverine.mp3
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1949-05-01 Sioux City IA Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-158

1949-05-05 Akron OH Beacon Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-159

1949-05-05 Tampa FL Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-160

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


At 27:50 the availability of the first issue of the Casey comic book is announced. It was not successful, lasting just four issues.

Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 All_4_10

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Post by greybelt 3/20/2020, 4:43 pm

Cupid Is a Killer is a script originally written for the sustained era of the Casey series, but it fits perfectly for the softer and more romantic undertones for the Toni target audience. It's a good and entertaining script, in comic book style, but not one of the series' best.

This is the latest episode of Toni run that is in circulation. Of the five surviving, The Wolverine was the only "traditional" script. The Toni scripts are not all that exciting, but Scene of the Crime offered more of Ethelbert than usual in an entertaining way, and Cupid is a Killer is definitely entertaining because the romantic subplot borders on screwball comedy. Scene and Cupid are still not at the best level of the Anchor Hocking run, but they each have some worthwhile moments.

ADC continuity notes...
Casey demonstrates to a love-smitten gangster the error of bumping off the opposition to clear the road for romance. When a man is murdered by a rifle bullet, the police and Casey, set out to break the air-tight alibi of Bat McCoy, known admirer or the victim's pretty wife. A trap baited with honey, a little more cooperation than usual the detectives on Capt. Logan's force, and another murder motive is set in motion - with dramatic and surprising results for everybody.

These are the notes regarding the original 1945-10-20 broadcast...
A killer named Bat McCoy shoots the piano player in his night club in order to have a free field with the widow, Valeria[sic], a friend of Ann and Casey. Kansas, a detective on the case, falls for Valerie and Casey and the police plan a trap whereby McCoy will try to kill the detective. Kansas and Valerie have a fight and Casey substitutes for him. The killer is trapped and after much wrangling between Casey, Ann, Valerie and Kansas, everything is straightened out and Kansas and the widow become engaged.

Casey's knowledge and personal familiarity with his city's criminals is brought into play in this episode.

The Bat McCoy characterization in the episode is very amusing as it is a street thug trying to sound sophisticated and gracious in eulogizing the deceased.

1:08 Ethelbert is bringing lemons up to the bar. Where's Walter?

8:40 The fascination that Kansas has with the Valerie begin at this point. He is absolutely smitten. He even asks Casey for a privately printed photo of her. It's not stalking, because Kansas is portrayed as having pure intentions and wanting the best for her. But he is messing with the object of a gangster's affections... so there is some danger ahead.

10:30 Throckmorton (Kansas) and Ethelbert meet and have comments about each others names. A brief and funny moment.

19:00 Kansas does not like Casey's plan and quits the police! They weren't expecting that, but it leads to the marvelous joke on Casey that makes the episode somewhat endearing. Logan keeps the secret and lays it on pretty thick to get Casey in trouble at around 22:45 and it all blows up on Casey starting at 24:00. The scene is well-done and worth a good and happy smirk if not a chuckle. This kind of scene is what makes the series endearing despite its occasional problems.

25:55 At the Blue Note, Casey is all discouraged, saying that "Ann is off him for life." It does have a very happy ending, and Kansas and Valerie are engaged, but not before keeping the joke going on Casey.

Bat McCoy gets a floral arrangement for the casket that looks like a piano. Don't believe it can be done? Look at this...
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Bat McCoy used a .30-30 rifle. The history of the Winchester rifle can be found at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

"Throckmorton" as a name comes from England. There's a different radio character with that name, but I just can't remember which character it is Smile

Casey 49-05-19 289 Cupid Is a Killer (Repeat of # 112 -- latest circ Toni) UPGRADE.mp3
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1949-05-19 Bakersfield CA Californian
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-161

1949-05-19 Tampa FL Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-162

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Post by greybelt 3/21/2020, 12:10 pm

Sell Out is the first of the Philip Morris sponsored Casey shows. The program has a bit more action, seem to have more acted violence rather than the way it was handled on the Toni shows where it was usually referred to it in the past tense. The shows are generally more exciting than the Toni run. Plotlines become a little more complex again, in line with the A-H series. This is a shift back to its original broader target audience.

1949-07-26 CBS Press Release
They didn't let the body get cold: the date of the release is two days before the final Toni episode. At least when Anchor-Hocking ended, they waited until the day after the final broadcast.
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-163

The 12 unique PM-sponsored episodes in circulation are mainly available as AFRS versions. We only have two episodes that are network broadcasts. (I'm not including 3 repeat broadcasts, 2 of which I have, one which I know about but don't have yet).

The episode begins with the legendary "Call for Philip Morris" by "the living trademark" Johnny Roventini. Read about him at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

New sponsor, new announcer: this time it's Ken Roberts. It's a little disconcerting as a collector to hear him because his voice is so associated with his announcing work on The Shadow, which is often the first series many of us listened to as newbie collectors.

New sponsor, new music: Archie Bleyer is gone, replaced by Cy Feuer, very well respected for his musical abilities. The show's music has a quite different style.
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Philip Morris marketing differentiation focused on "cigarette hangover." It worked well for them, increasing sales. At the end of this post are more details including two comic strips about the concept that appeared in newspapers.

ADC continuity notes... (typos included)
Them State-O-Mainers say "bawth" for bath - and it's a good thing for Casey that they do or there's no telling what might have happened to our Crime photographer in this script. Talbot, the Morning Express' new assistant manager is listening to Casey try to sell him on the idea of paying $15,000 for an exclusive story - a documented expose of civic corruption. Casey goes on to explain that a man in the confidence of one Harry Fitzroy, a gang leader, will supply him with evidence that a number of important city officials receive a regular pay-off from Fitzroy - and for this information the "confidence man" wants $15,000. At first Talbot can't be sold on the idea but finally Casey convinces hill that it's worth following up - and Talbot turns over $15,000 in cash to Casey. Casey and Ann set out to meet said confidence man and they meet up with all kinds of trouble. Casey gets slugged - their confidence man is found dead - and the 15 grand disappears. A local neighbor identifies Casey as the man who came to his door and who was seen lurking near the scene of the crime shortly before the murder. Casey swears he just arrived and he's never seen the neighbor before this. For awhile it looks as if Casey is pretty much involved in what is going on - but the old neighbor's faint recollection of the manner of speech used by the man who came to his door throws light on the real suspect and absolves Casey of any wrong-doing.

$15,000 is $180,000 -- it's an outrageous amount. Cole continues the policy of pecuniary puffery to make listeners gasp and pay attention. That $15,000 is 4.5x average US household income for 1950.

Is this an episode where Casey is based in Boston? It's a reasonable trip to Portland, Maine along Route 1 (Interstate 95 did not exist yet).

Bath, Maine is a city along the coast. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Cole put in his notes that it sounds like "Bawth" but my experience has been that it sounds more like "Bahth"

1:33 Ethelbert calls Walter for coffee for Ann (no response). The coffee does eventually get delivered, but all we hear is the cup and saucer being placed on the counter.

2:26 Cole lays the groundwork for the solution: a new Morning Express employee, Talbot, the assistant editor. He has Maine accent, which is important to the story, and also the stereotypical prudent skepticism of spending money.

3:04 Burke has lines again! He pleads the case for the money. Casey won't reveal his source, but Talbot demands full disclosure. We later learn it's because Talbot is a devious person and he wants to know who the informer is. It turns out to be "Squint Hummel." Casey then gives specific details of when, where, and how he will be meeting Hummel at at McBurney's Point. At this moment in the story, Casey has given enough Talbot enough information that he has essentially written Squint Hummel's death warrant -- but he does not realize that until much later.

Inside joke played by Cole: McBurney's Point is part of human anatomy! [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

7:35 Both Casey and Ann are knocked out! The slowly return to consciousness. The money was stolen, and they think Squint double-crossed them.

8:30 They look in the car: Squint Hummel has been shot, in the head and two in the chest! Casey realizes that he's been framed as part of the shooting.

10:15 They realize that a neighbor (Mosley) to the property is walking near them... Casey mis-recognized, a result of the plan to frame him. Someone wearing clothes like Casey had gone to the neighbor before, but he never saw Casey's face. Key item: the person the neighbor spoke to sounded like a native Mainer (a "Bahth" man), but Casey doesn't. This does not really click on Casey until later when he starts to figure out everything that happened.

12:48 The officer who had started to interrogate Casey and Ann is shot by some badly rendered gun shot sound effects! The neighbor runs away... and they're asked to turn over the envelope they were getting from Squint. Casey gets knocked out again! The gangsters talk about getting a tip about what Casey and Ann were doing, and she told them they were double-crossed, too.

16:58 Casey regains consciousness and gets them to stop the car and knocks out the two thugs. Casey takes their car and leaves with Ann... he's figured out the crime and describes how they were framing him.

18:50 Ann says "we can't stay on the lam for very long." Casey says "you, at least, aren't the type," admitting Ann's ingrained honesty and goodness, much different than his own, much rougher personality.

20:00 Casey calls Logan and asks that Mosley be released from custody as a witness. Logan grudgingly agrees. Mosley says he could have sworn that Casey was a "Bahth" man, the second time he has said it, and now Casey fully understands the story.

21:45 Casey realizes what's happened... and it's all because of the Maine accent!

22:36 Talbot walks into Mosley's home. We realized that Mosley called Talbot, at the urging of Casey, and told him to come because he had information about Hummel's murder. Talbot pulls his gun on Mosley because he knows that he can be blackmailed with what Mosley knows. Logan jumps into the scene quickly and shoots Talbot in his gun hand.

In the Blue Note epilogue, we learn that Talbot had big plans to blackmail gang leader Fitzroy and others for more money than the $15,000 from his own newspaper. And, he would have let the gangsters kill Casey and Ann to cover up the entire scheme.

Bernard Lenrow remains excluded from the closing credits. He was still working on Molle Mystery Theater as "Geoffrey Barnes." If you want to see Lenrow, he appears in this episode of TV's Tales of Tomorrow as a lawyer, about 15 seconds into the video [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

We don't know if Cole picked the name Hummel because of the popular-at-the-time German porcelain figurines that soldiers brought back from their service time in post-war Germany. Writers grabbed names from streets, products, neighbors, and other inspirations, even obscure names from anatomy as we learned in this episode, while they were writing. Cole was always good at silly nicknames. "Squint" usually meant someone who wore glasses. In the popular TV series Bones, it referred to lab technicians who were always looking into microscopes.

CBS had an internal mix-up as to when certain scripts would be used for the first two weeks of the Morris sponsorship, as can be seen from these press releases.

CBS Press Release, likely issued 1949-08-01 or shortly thereafter
Confusion in the office: Death of a Stranger was announced at some as the first episode, with Sell Out being presented the week after.
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-165

1949-08-08 CBS Press Release
Now they got it right.
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-164

Casey 49-08-04 300 Sell-Out (Philip Morris sponsor) UPGRADE.mp3
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1949-07-31 Port Huron MI Times Herald
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-166

1949-08-04 Cincinnati OH Enquirer
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-167

1949-08-04 Hagerstown MD Herald
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-168

1949-08-04 Minneapolis MN Star
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-169

1949-08-04 Rochester NY Democrat & Chronicle
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-170

1949-08-07 Sioux City IA Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-171

1949-08-11 Miami FL News
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-172

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

These are news items and ads related to Philip Morris and their sponsorship decision.

1949-02-10 Jefferson City MO Daily Capital News
The new marketing strategy is working
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-173

Billboard 1949-06-25
The news broke in Billboard that PM would be leaving the William Spier version of Philip Morris Playhouse. Casey was a highly rated program, probably better than PMP, and a lot less expensive to produce.
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo22

1949-07-03 Lincoln NB Star
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-174

1949-07-29 Indianapolis IN News
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-175

1949-07-30 Davenport IA Daily Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-176

These are examples of their marketing campaign outside of radio. Remember, there's really no television advertising possibility. These panels would have become TV ads at a later time, but using the comic format lets them tell an extended story in a unique way. When ad agencies plan their TV commercials, they make storyboards that look almost like comic strips/

1949-04-10 Boston MA Globe
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-177

1949-08-21 Richmond VA Times Dispatch
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-178

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Post by greybelt 3/21/2020, 5:38 pm

Death of a Stranger is a good Casey episode that draws from real-life aspects of stamp collecting as an element of the crime. The hobby was very popular in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. FDR was known as a stamp collector, and the hobby grew as a way to pass the time during WW2. It's a good story, but it's easy to lose track of, but worth sticking with.

ADC continuity notes...
Millionaire Robert Heiden, dealer in rare stamps refuses to see an elderly gentleman who calls to offer a "three skilling orange error," a Swedish stamp. Knowing the only one of its kind belongs to an ex-King, Mr. Heiden assumed the man was an imposter.  A few minutes later, Heiden's son, Arthur, discovers the man in the reception room, dead.  Capt. Logan responds to a reported "suicide" call but declares the unidentified man has been murdered -- that the throat-cutting could not be self-inflicted.  Casey takes a picture.  After questioning Heiden's secretary and his two sons, the case seems stymied because no one recognizes the stranger. Casey shows the picture to Ethelbert who recognizes the murdered man as Angelo Carfora and tells Casey where he lives. Ann and Casey set off to investigate without informing Logan.  As they approach the house, an explosion is heard from within Carfora's house, flames follow and a man dashes from the house. In the darkness, the fleeing man shoots Casey's flashlight from his hand, slugs Ann and Casey.  They recover as the Fire Dept. is arriving.  Ann stumbles on a gun which police trace by seria1 number and report a permit for same was issued in the name of Arthur Heiden.  Now Casey and Logan and Ann return to the Heiden home to question the elder Heiden again, having learned that Carfora was also a stamp collector.  In the midst of this session, the millionaire is shot from the hallway and his son Arthur is found holding a gun. Despite this incriminating chain of evidence, Casey remonstrates that the boy is innocent and proceeds to reveal the true killer.

2:04 Heiden knows what the "three skilling orange error" is and that it is indeed held by an exiled king. Cole is drawing from real life here. See the article in Wikipedia [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and also see the news clipping below as the actual stamp was put up for auction the year following the program.

4:00 Arthur finds the dead stranger in the hallway. It's first thought of as suicide, but it turns out to be murder.

5:58 They make a point that the murdered man had an "interesting" and "nice face." That's the power of radio. Everyone can imagine what comprises an "interesting face" and a "nice face."

6:33 They have great fun with the word "philately" and that Casey doesn't know it; the rest of the show he makes a point of using it and makes it seem like he knew the word all along when he later talks to Logan (15:28).

9:00 Mr. Nestorcamp is another Blue Note customer, mentioned by name by Ethelbert, but no dialogue.

10:50 Ethelbert recognizes the victim as Angelo Carfora. The last time Ethelbert recognized a murder victim was in 1949-03-10 Scene of the Crime when he was taking his correspondence course in detection. Ethelbert is totally befuddled by Ann's kiss on the cheek for helping with the case.

11:42 Before they can get into Carfora's house, it bursts into flames... and 11:52 someone's shooting at Casey! Casey gets knocked out by the gunman, and so does Ann! They were knocked out in last week's episode, too! Radio detectives do not have a concussion protocol, it seems. But after the mid-show commercial, they're both okay.

15:55 They learn that it was Arthur's gun that Casey found at the fire.

17:50 During the conversation with Robert Heiden, he mentioned that Carfora had sent him stamps before and asked if they were authentic. All of them were forgeries, except for the recent time when he brought him a "postmaster provisional." That's a real thing; read about it at Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_postmasters_provisional_stamps

18:12 Heiden is told that the murder victim was Carfora... he had never met him though he did business with him through the mail.

18:53 Heiden is shot! Did Arthur kill him?

22:00 It's sibling jealousy that drove the incidents... Horace killed Carfora because Arthur could get away with all kinds of misbehavior. We learn the details at the Blue Note.

25:30 Casey explains that Carfora was a skilled engraver who was trying to create replicas of collectible stamps. He was sending Heiden his work because as a collector of renown, he could spot fakes. In all those iterations, Carfora was perfecting his techniques. Horace got the idea to sell Carfora's work to other collectors not as known replicas, but as forgeries. Horace tried to frame Arthur for the deaths of Carfora and his father.

You get a sense of lusher orchestra arrangements under Feuer. He had previously worked on Escape and was probably influenced by Spier and Robson's use of music on Suspense and other Hollywood productions. The Bleyer arrangements had a much different sound. If any music aficionados can describe the exact differences, that would be appreciated.

Casey 49-08-11 301 The Death of a Stranger UPGRADE.mp3
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1949-08-11 Wisconsin State Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-179

About five months after the broadcast, the exiled king who owned the Swedish stamp in question put it up for auction.

1950-01-29 Pittsburgh PA Press
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1950-135

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Post by bojim1 3/22/2020, 3:10 am

Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy

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Post by greybelt 3/22/2020, 12:32 pm

Snowball is a good program despite some really bad acting in an early scene and what seems to be an obvious plot hole. Ignore the bad acting. A little history of automobile technology, something most everyone about cars takes for granted, makes it clear there is no plot hole. It's a reminder that this is old time radio, and though these stories so often transcend their eras, they are still products of their time. The story is one that might never have been broadcast if Toni was still a sponsor. A faked murder-suicide staged by a woman? The idea could make someone's hair curl... without Toni!

The remainder of the Philip Morris episodes are AFRS recordings. They do not usually have any performance credits; the network recording ends at the end of the Blue Note epilogue, and then immediately cuts to the AFRS identification.

ADC continuity notes...

A murdered woman is found in the back seat of a car driven by an inebriated character who swears he never saw her before. The woman is identified and Casey sets out to question her husband - but finds him dead too, with a suicide note beside the body. It looks like an open and shut case of murder and then suicide born out of an insanely jealous husband's wrath. Neighbors are quick to tell that the dead man was insanely jealous of his beautiful wife who had attracted the attention of her husband's employer, a very handsome and suave ladies man. However, this theory is thrown to the wind when, a short time later, another dead woman is found in the same vicinity as the first. Investigation reveals that jealousy was the motive - but circumstances prove that it was not the husband's jealousy that brought about the triple tragedy - but by another, who, oddly enough, was believed to be out of the country at the time of the catastrophe.

1:49 The drunk's lines "I never saw that woman before" is delivered by the actor so badly, twice. It would be funny if it wasn't so grating.

2:45 George P. Rasko pleads his case to Logan... he says he was drunk and got into a car that looked exactly like his. It's a mystery how he got the car to run without his keys. It's not... keys were only needed to lock and unlock cars. The car he mistakenly got into was obviously left unlocked. It was not until Chrysler introduced key ignitions in 1949 that you needed a key to start a car. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

1949-03-17 Auburn CA Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-184

7:07 They realize the suicide is of James R. Royce, owner of the car that looked like Rosko's, and husband of the strangled woman in the car.

Cole lays some groundwork for the solution to the crime by emphasizing how attractive Mrs. Royce is and how women were jealous of her looks and concerned about her catching the glances of their husbands.

11:12 Casey, Ann, and Logan visit Carlton Judd, Royce's boss. He was expecting Royce, but he never came. Judd's wife went to California, and the servants the Judds had in the house were all off for the night. Royce had a key to the apartment. Judd says he was out at a movie Lost Boundaries at the Empire Theater. It was a real movie [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and was a highly regarded (Cannes award) film about race relations. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  For what seems to be an unprovoked reason, Casey asks if the apartments are soundproof, and Judd says no. Cole obviously plants that in the story because has a plan to use that as a factor in the conclusion.

15:30 Ann takes a call at the Blue Note that a woman's body has been found at the same apartment building. The medical examiner at the scene says the woman, a servant, was dead prior to being thrown from a top floor apartment.

17:25 Now we know the reason for the title. Casey explains how the first murder kept growing and growing like a snowball going down a hill into another murder involving other people in the building.

18:35 Casey starts figuring out the case... while confronting Judd. Mrs. Royce was killed in Judd's apartment and her body brought down to the car parked in the street, but it was the wrong car. It had to be arranged to make it look like Royce killed his own wife, and then committed suicide.

20:50 Judd confesses... Casey doesn't accept it... Judd's wife is not in California. She's been hiding in the apartment next door. This is why Cole planted the "thin walls" that she could hear her husband confess to the crime. Her trip was faked so she could spy on her husband to see if he was cheating on her with Mrs. Royce.

1949-08-17 CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-182

This script is unlikely to have been accepted by the Toni management and their ad agency as the three-time murderer of this episode is a woman. It's an indication of how the show changed under Philip Morris.

The AFRS identification is "This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education." Sometimes the identification is useful for identifying which repeated Casey broadcasts are from which years.

Casey 49-08-25 303 Snowball AFRS#36 UPGRADE.mp3
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1949-08-25 Tampa FL Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-183

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

These are interesting items about the show that appeared in newspapers around this time.

1949-08-13 Binghamton NY Press & Sun-Bulletin
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-180

1949-08-14 Sioux City IA Journal
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-181

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Post by greybelt 3/22/2020, 6:26 pm

The Coffin is a better than average episode, and yet another one where the primary murderer is a woman... Toni would have never gone for that! It is an unlikely plot but worthy of some of the better comic book detective stories. For that reason, it is entertaining, but not a top episode.

The main recording is not the best, so two recordings are posted, with the second one processed for the disc scratch and the background noise.

There are no ADC continuity notes... the notebook just skips this episode; there are no newspaper clippings. The decision to use the script may have been made closer to broadcast time than usual.

The episode opens with a great gimmick... gangsters trying to buy a coffin for a rival gang leader who is not yet dead... or sick.

0:50 The gangsters walk into a coffin manufacturer asking to make a purchase. The sales representative says his name is "Cook" or "Cooke." The reason that is "a funny name for a casket salesman" is that the largest funeral home in New York City was  Walter B. Cooke. Cooke was a considered a pioneer in the business.

1949-06-05 NY Daily News
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-189

2:00 Nick Maddock is whom the coffin is being purchased for. Andrew Grollo is the gangster buying it.

3:04 Logan calls the casket a "silver-plated slumber box." Earlier, 1:37 the gangster called it a "plush-lined box."

5:20 Maddock calls Logan asking if they have heard anything; Grollo and his gang walked into the police station! This gives them an alibi for the Maddock killing.

7:38 Casey says that they "may find the point" at Maddock's apartment. He sure does. At 13:01 Casey steps on a thumbtack. Whenever something innocuous and nonsensical happens, Cole has placed it there for a reason.

While Casey and Ann are talking to Inez at Maddock's apartment, she's arguing with Maddock and says she's standing by a doorway. She's putting herself in the right position so as not to get in the way when Maddock gets shot.

10:25 She mentions she grew up in a mill town and that her father was a weaver. That's important later.

10:38 Nick Maddock is shot!

14:02 Officer Bernstein finds fishing line outside, some of it tied in a "sheet bend knot" [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  It is assumed that whomever killed Maddock was in the navy at some time.

15:30 At the Blue Note, two weeks have passed without any resolution to the case. Ethelbert says he knows how to make the knot because his mother taught him, except to her, it was called a "weaver's knot."

All of this leads to Casey's theory that Inez, Maddock's girlfriend, created the combination of fishline, thumbtack, and gun, to give her an alibi because she could execute the plan in plain sight of people who would be her alibi. In this case, Casey and Ann. It was also coordinated that Grollo's gang would all be in jail at the time of the shooting. The rope ladder outside the building was used as a decoy.

20:25 Ann turns on the light in Inez' apartment, and Grollo is there looking for evidence, too. 20:54 There's a gun in the room, as Ann says "we're always willing to help a man who has a gun pointed at us." They're all looking for a clamp that held the gun. Grollo says she made him sign an incriminating letter.

22:07 Inez and Grollo shoot each other convinced that one double-crossed the other.

Ann calls Ethelbert a "skinker." The word means "someone who pours liquor." In recent years, there is a vastly different and more obscene definition, which could cleanly be described as a "woman on the prowl for a man." Casey says "skinker" is also a kind of lizard, which is correct. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The AFRS announcement includes the cast and identifies the network with "This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education."

Here are the two copies, one essentially raw and the other one processed.

Casey 49-10-20 311 The Coffin AFRS#42 UPGRADE.mp3
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Casey 49-10-20 311 The Coffin AFRS#42 PROCESSED UPGRADE-2.mp3
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hubiC [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Since there are no newspaper clippings for this episode, here are some other interesting items

1949-10-26 Hutchinson KS News
Casey is the 10th highest rated show
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-187

1949-10-26 Visalia CA Times-Delta
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-186

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Casey was generally disliked by radio critics, and one of the bigger naysayers was John Crosby, right from the beginning of the series. In this column, he sneers at the series, and by extension, its listeners. He could have, at least, gotten the character names and their spellings correct, but he did not. Since he is critiquing a particular episode, I thought it might be interesting to show the notes from the continuity book that I have been working from. The episode he targets is not in circulation.

Cole's notes for 1949-04-07 Murder in the Air
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Cole_n10

1949-04-15 Miami FL Herald
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-185


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Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Empty Re: Casey, Crime Photographer

Post by bojim1 3/23/2020, 4:35 am

Thanks!!

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Post by greybelt 3/23/2020, 6:30 am

Thunderbolt ranks down at the bottom of Casey episodes, along with Great Grandfather's Rent Receipt and Action Photograph. There are elements of 1947-04-24 The Gentle Strangler that are re-used in the story. The plot and the dialogue are lifeless and the mad man who thinks he's Thor is silly and unconvincing. It's disappointing that this episode even made it to the air.

ADC continuity notes...

Dr. Foley, prominent brain surgeon, is found murdered - killed with a small tack hammer. His body is found on a dark street - after a thunderstorm - stretched out under a streetlamp. The previous week, Eli Whitlock, famous playwright, was found dead - under similar circumstances. A third murder is committed - under the same conditions and again, as in the two previous instances, the victim was a prominent, successful member of the community. A letter (the second of its kind) is received at City Desk, giving advance notice that another murder is about to be committed. The writer, who signs himself "Thunderbolt," promises another victim will meet his fate on the next rainy night. He describes his pretty certain intended victim and it's from the description, that be has Casey in mind. The next rainy night finds Casey on his way home - and sure enough he meets up with said murderer. After much struggling - and  some quick thinking on Casey's part, the killer is subdued and Casey has solved another crime.

This is somewhat like Gentle Strangler where people are accosted in the street and attacked. Some of the dialogue with Foley in the street is similar. The victim there was Whitcomb. The previous victim here was Whitlock. Cole is grabbing elements here and there.

2:12 The criminal (named Thorson) says that the thunder reminds him of Thor... get it? He's Thor's son.

A tack hammer was used in the killings. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Whitlock's alleged killer had been arrested and put in jail. But he never admitted the killing, just going through the pockets of someone already dead. Now, this new killing appeared to exonerate the person jailed.

4:55 Burke appears again. He has a letter from Thor, "his thunderbolt will destroy others." He'll attack again in the next thunderstorm, implying that it will be a financier of some kind.

7:00 Ann and Burke make some fun of Casey for not really knowing the legend Thor.

9:12 Thorson meets Klammert in the street... the attack is not enacted, but the scene changes to Logan's office in the aftermath of the new killing, also with a tack hammer. Thorson is disabling street lights with a BB gun.

12:00 Burke visits Logan -- this is the first time in a surviving recording that Burke and Logan are in the same room! He has another letter from Thunderbolt: the next victim target will be Casey, though not mentioned by name, all of the characteristics fit him and no one else.

15:28 Ann pleads with Casey to drive home and not walk home, and to take other precautions. 16:00 Of course he doesn't listen, and asks the parking attendant to not tell Ann.

16:40 Thunderbolt walks up to Casey as he walks home. 17:10 He says he saw Casey at the police station when he was visiting Sergeant McCloskey. Cole used a similar name for a neighbor of a murder victim, McCluskey, in Murder in Black and White.

17:42 It clicks on Casey when he hears the name "Thorson" that he's with Thunderbolt.

18:35 McCloskey is walking in the street, too, and joins them... saying that Logan asked for extra protection for Casey. Carl Thorson excuses himself.

20:35 Casey is in his apartment and the phone is ringing. It's Ann checking up on him as planned, a few minutes late.

21:28 Logan calls and checks on Casey... Thorson has walked through Casey's unlocked door! "You can see I'm armed with a revolver." Just like Gentle Strangler, Casey is confronted with a killer in his very own apartment. Thorson says he will throw his hammer at Casey.

23:35 Casey calls Logan to come and collect the Thunderbolt killer. The dialogue is very similar to that of Gentle Strangler (starting at 24:10 of that episode) for the call, except this time Casey speaks directly to Logan. The ending of that story is a bit more complex where here it is abridged.

The AFRS announcement is "This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education." No cast information is given.

Casey 49-11-10 314 Thunderbolt AFRS (ends with This Is the US Armed Forces).mp3
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There are no meaningful newspaper clippings for this episode. These are some other items of interest.

1949-11-09 Cincinnati OH Enquirer
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-191

1949-11-10 Scranton PA Times-Tribune
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-190

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Post by greybelt 3/24/2020, 5:04 am

The Upholsterer was repeated twice on the series, 1949-11-17 and almost exactly a year later on 1950-11-16. It is possible that the second network broadcast was transcribed as there are no notes for it in the Cole document and it was the final broadcast for Philip Morris, and assumed to be the final broadcast forever. The only copies that exist are AFRS copies. It's a below average production with what seems to be lots of time-filling dialogue and little real action.

There are many episodes left to post (7, then 2 revival episodes) but now is as good a time as any to make some comments related to the repeat episode of The Upholsterer. The 1950-11-16 episode is the final episode of the series as far as the cast and producers were concerned. The 1954-1955 revival would have been considered crazy at this time; no one would have thought it was possible or even necessary. Philip Morris let its sponsorship contract expire with the 1950-11-16 episode, and like others, were taking their ad dollars elsewhere. The action for drama on CBS had shifted strongly to Hollywood, and New York would be the source of CBS' daytime soaps. Casey went on to television where it did very badly, but was broadcast from April 1951 through June 1952. John Gibson was the only holdover from the radio cast, and they even replaced him after a while.

ADC continuity notes for the 1949 broadcast... (typos included)
Casey is assigned to cover a story involving the death of one Mr. Goldblatt, found dead in his upholstery establishment. The baffling question facing the police is How did the killer, after shooting the old man, manage to leave a chair against the locked door - inside?  An old overstuffed chair with an address tag attached to it gives Casey his first cIue,  He and Ann visit the address and meet Mrs. Potter there who tells them she let Mr. Goldblatt take the chair to his store that morning for repairs.....  She goes on to say that it was removed from the room of one of her boarders - and that he flew into a rage when he discovered it missing. Casey and Ann visit the man's room and are doing some snooping around when Suddenly the door opens and they are face to face with a murderer - and a thief.. for it is later revealed that this man not only killed Mr. Goldblatt but also pulled one of the biggest robberies which, up to this moment, had seemed unsolvable.

In following up the report of the crime, the beat cop asks a kid break a window, and then let the cop in by unlocking the door from the inside. Doesn't that seem like the possibility of contaminating a crime scene? They find Goldblatt dead, and there's no one hiding in the shop, and there's no gun. It's a locked room mystery, a favorite of writers.

7:55 Casey, Ann, and Logan are at the crime scene. The question they're grappling with is how the killer got out when a chair was up against the door. Goldblatt used to prop a chair against that door at the close of every day because he was always afraid of being robbed.

9:35 The body was near the furniture that Goldblatt was repairing. This is where later Casey notices that one chair is carefully attended to, and another has been cut almost haphazardly with a blade.

10:04 Logan is so befuddled he asks Casey to help solve the crime! "I'm just a newspaper mug, pal" is what Casey says. Logan is disappointed because they have made no progress solving the robbery of $80,000 (almost $1 million in 2020 dollars) of Charles Casimir. 11:00 Logan asks Casey for help another time since his hunches sometimes work out. The dialogue seems quite padded, much like the sofa.

11:50
Casey notices that a chair has had its covering very carefully removed, which is odd since Goldblatt's work was usually to put new upholstery on furniture, not to use the older covering. He also found another chair that had big knife cuts in it the covering. Casey has a hunch!

13:43 Casey thinks the noise in the shop after the shots. He thinks the noise was the fall of a chair that was piled on top of another, not the fall of Goldblatt's body.

15:40 They arrive at the rooming house address that sent the chair to Goldblatt's shop, believing that the clue to the mystery will be finding the reason for the repair and who sent it.

16:50
Casey and Ann pose as husband and wife to meet Mrs. Potter, the landlady. There are some funny moments. Casey notices a reupholstered chair, and she says that she sent a chair there just yesterday. She says the chair had no cuts, it was just shabby. The tenant who had that chair was quite upset when he realized that the chair was sent away. The tenant was the bookkeeper for Charles Casimir! (Gee, what a coincidence!) Now we know what happened... there was something in the chair... the loot from the Casimir robbery!

22:13
The bookkeeper comes home from work... early! Casey disarms him as he fires two shots, and knocks him out! The bookkeeper had killed Goldblatt and Casimir. He stole the money from Casmir and hid the money inside the chair that was sent to Goldblatt.

Other episodes have involved furniture: 1946-09-19 Duke of Skid Row had a crown hidden in a special compartment in a chair; 1947-11-06 The Case of the Blonde Lipstick had the lipstick stuck between cushions.

1949-11-11 CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-194

There are two different AFRS releases of the 1949 version and one release of the 1950 version that are in circulation.
49-11-17  COPY 1 The AFRS announcement follows Ann's last bit of dialogue and is "This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education." No cast information is given.
49-11-17  COPY 2 has just music with no AFRS statement after Ann's last line.
50-11-16 After Ann's last line, some brief closing music follows. The AFRS announcement is "This adventure of Crime Photographer starring Staat [sic] Cotsworth as Casey, came to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education." This recording close matches the AFRS that of the recording of 50-11-09 Woman of Mystery, which is how it is identified.
1949 COPY 1
Casey 49-11-17 315 The Upholsterer AFRS (ends with This Is the US Armed Forces) FROM DISC.mp3

Degoo (to come)
hubiC [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

1949 COPY 2
Casey 49-11-17 315 The Upholsterer AFRS (has no AFRS
identification).mp3
Degoo  (to come)
hubiC [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

1950 COPY
Casey 50-11-16 367 The Upholsterer AFRS (Repeat of #315)
(EndsWith'CameToYouThrough') UPGRADE LQ.mp3
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1949-11-17 Camden NJ Courier-Post
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-193

1949-11-17 San Antonio TX Express
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1949-192

There are no newspaper clippings for the 1950 broadcast.

This clip from Billboard reports the demise of the series with the November 16, 1950 episode.

Billboard 1950-09-23
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 Billbo23

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Post by greybelt 3/24/2020, 6:32 am

Wanted: A Gun is a rather simple story, a below-average entry in the Casey series. There's nothing really bad about the episode, it's good to hear the cast play it all out, but there's nothing compelling about the endeavor.

ADC continuity notes...
A jealous husband purchases a gun - later he is found dead. The wife is questioned.  Soon after another murder ls committed - this man was an admirer of the first dead man's wife. It appears that she used the second man to rid herself of a jealous husband - and then wanted him out of the way also.  A corner torn from a $100 bill and saturated with perfume is found in the latter dead man's hand - the matching remainder is discovered in the woman's purse. Investigation shows us that the woman had no part in the murders - that the killer planted the same perfume that she was accustomed to wearing on the torn $100 bill so as to throw suspicion toward the woman.

This show is often confused with another show, 1948-05-27 #239 Gun Wanted. It is misidentified as circulating in the Siegel & Cox book and Wanted: A Gun is noted as missing. Key tipoff: the Gun Wanted episode would have Bill Cullen as the announcer because the date places it in the Toni run. Because Ken Roberts is the announcer, it is part of the Philip Morris run. The ADC continuity notes make it very clear that Gun Wanted is a much different episode, with the plot centered around a storekeeper murdered by a gangster.

The story begins with a Mr. Mercer entering a pet shop owned by Mr. Paxton. Mercer was told was Paxton was able to quietly procure guns. He wants to protect himself from a criminal being released, Jeff Robbins, who had threatened Mercer and Robbins wife whom he suspected of cheating. 2:21 Mercer is shocked when the gun will cost $75. That's $825 in 2020 dollars.

Pigs knuckles and sauerkraut is what's being offered at the Blue Note today. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Burke calls the Blue Note and tells Casey that Jeff Robbins has been shot. At 4:45 Casey and Ann are with Logan at the alley where Robbins was shot. Logan knows that Robbins was "green-eyed" (jealous) about Mercer.

6:00 Business partner Carl Bantry identifies the body. Bantry and Robbins were in the chemical business. 7:40 Mercer is brought to the scene and the police found the gun with two chambers fired. He says he didn't fire the gun and did not kill Robbins. 8:30 Paxton denies selling the gun, and denies selling guns at all.

10:45 Casey is suspicious that Paxton used the gun on Robbins before giving it to Mercer to frame him. Paxton may have done both because he was interested in Mrs. Robbins, too. This theory of the crime turns out to be incorrect.

11:40 Mrs. Robbins perfume is mentioned, and is important as a diversion planted by the real killer. Logan and Casey stumble over each other getting the widow a glass of water.

13:20 Ann thinks Mrs. Robbins put Mercer up to killing her husband. Casey is still uncertain what happened. He's wrong again.

14:40 Casey and Ann find Paxton murdered... poisoned... and the odor of Mrs. Robbins perfume is in the air.

16:25 Casey and Ann find the corner of a $100 bill saturated with her perfume. They decide to confront Mrs. Robbins. 17:55 Casey looks in her handbag and finds a stack of $100 bills, one of which has a corner missing. The discussion leads to the possibility of Bantry being involved in the crime. Mrs. Robbins would inherit the share of the partnership. By framing her for the crime, Bantry would own the company free and clear. Casey has a hunch that Bantry is behind it all (the death of Robbins and the framing of Mercer). Casey asks her to invite him to her apartment, and to offer him a drink.

21:55 Just as Bantry and the widow are about to clink glasses, Casey and Ann come out from where they were hiding. The tell Mrs. Robbins not to drink from the glass. They're convinced she was about to be poisoned. Casey slugs Bantry and knocks him out.

Back at the Blue Note, we learn that Bantry confessed to the police that a new chemical formula that toughens plastic was developed while Robbins was in jail. Because Robbins was not involved in creating it, Bantry wanted all the profits for himself because it was valued at $100,000 ($1.1 million in 2020 dollars).

The AFRS closing, after some music, is "Tonight's adventure was written by Alonzo Deen Cole. Staat [sic] Cotsworth played the part of Casey, Jan Miner was Ann, and John Gibson was Ethelbert. Next week, another adventure of Casey, Crime Photographer! This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education."

CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1950-137
Casey 50-01-19 324 Wanted - A Gun AFRS#32 UPGRADE.mp3
Degoo (to be supplied later)
hubiC [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

There are no newspaper clips of consequence, but this one shows the popularity of the program among photographer professionals.

1950-01-19 Tampa FL Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1950-136

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Post by greybelt 3/24/2020, 8:03 pm

Bad Little Babe has its flaws, but once you ignore or accept certain aspects of the plot, it is an entertaining story of misjudgment on the parts of Casey and Ann that turns into redemption and the best kind of revenge and justice.

ADC continuity notes...
Casey receives a mysterious phone call telling him to not leave his apartment or he will be killed... At first he thinks this is a gag but after successfully dodging a few close bullets, he is willing to believe otherwise. Casey's investigation reveals a flourishing game of blackmail - a suicide - and he runs into a gal who he believes is a part of this whole frame, but who, he later learns, is responsible for saving his life.

Once you accept or ignore the low likelihood that a 19-year-old woman can create and sustain a months-long scheme to take down an underworld figure, the story works. It's not that the gangsters can't be outsmarted by a 19-year-old, it's just that she would likely be silenced or found out in some manner before it could play out. It's hard to fathom that anyone, no matter their age, would be able to carry out the scheme without slipping up somewhere. Even the best undercover agents can slip up. Remember: Casey's a comic book, and things that are somewhat implausible are always possible. It's just that this is wildly implausible. Ignore it and enjoy the episode.

0:52 Casey gets the call that his life is in danger and he should not go to the parking lot to go to his car. He calls Logan, who arrives with other police to surveil Casey as he walks to his car.

4:26 The shooting starts, but Casey's okay; the gunmen are killed, but Casey does not recognize them.

When there's a lot of characters, it's often one of Cole's better stories; they might be hard to keep track of...
- Joe Kirby, gangster
- Sam Alberts, the gangster that Kirby likely killed (no lines)
- Sandra Lampson, girlfriend of Joe Kirby; she's a late judge's daughter, whom Casey has known most of her life; 6:30 Ann refers to her as a "bad little babe." The judge committed suicide by crashing his car.
- Emma Humphreys is Kirby's prior girlfriend, likely jealous of Sandra and angry at Kirby; Casey thinks Emma is the person who warned him (we thought the character had lines, but as the story moves on, we know she didn't.
- Sandra Lent is the person with whom Kirby was having dinner, his alibi for the Humphries shooting (no lines)
- Lou, a gangster who works for Kirby, gives Casey a tip, but actually leads Casey into a trap

8:20 Burke calls Casey at the Blue Note that Emma Humphreys was killed; 9:10 Logan thinks Emma was the one who tipped Casey, and Kirby had her killed in revenge for ruining his plot to kill Casey.

11:18 Kirby tells Casey he's marrying Sandra Lampson; Casey starts to scuffle with him over the idea, stopped by Logan.

12:42 Casey makes a "date" with Sandra Lampson at the home where her father lived and she grew up. There is important dialogue is where she tells Casey where to sit... he realizes the she bugged the room for Kirby, and then he gives her and Kirby an earful!

15:50 Casey is carrying a gun to protect himself, at Logan's insistence.

16:25 A gangster calls Casey at the Blue Note. Casey leaves to talk to "Lou," who is upset that Kirby and Sandra Lampson killed Emma Humphreys.

19:50
Casey and Lou climb into Sandra Lampson's bedroom to find the gun she is hiding. The gun is exactly where Lou said it was "wrapped in a nighty."

20:30 It's a trap! Kirby and Sandra step out from a closet, and Lou is part of the trap! She says she planned the trap. She calls Casey "a chump" and her shooting him would be covered by claiming Casey broke into the apartment.

21:35 She says that Kirby trusted her fully when he heard the tape recording of Casey. Lou admits he killed Emma.

22:13 Sandra turns on the thugs! She explains her long-executed hoax to trap Kirby. Her father wrote a letter to her before his suicide that Kirby had been blackmailing him. Casey says Sandra is "one swell little babe."

23:50 Gibson stumbles over dialogue and it's perfectly natural.

The AFRS closing is music after the Blue Note epilogue and then "This adventure of Crime Photographer starring Staat [sic] Cotsworth as Casey, came to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education."

CBS Press Release
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1950-139

Casey 50-03-02 330 Bad Little Babe AFRS.mp3
Degoo (to be supplied)
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1950-03-02 Miami FL Herald
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1950-138

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Post by greybelt 3/25/2020, 2:39 pm

The Fire is a typical Casey episode, but has a little more than usual flirty interplay with Casey and Ann because one of the clues to the solution is the diamond rings in the story. Casey hates them; Ann loves them.

As I'm digging through the broadcast history of this series I have been finding many more repeats than expected and originally thought. Cole often changed the names of his scripts when they would be reused. And when he repeated them, he usually changed the names of the characters. In the Thunderbolt episode we heard many similarities with Gentle Strangler. We can't detect them all because we only have 80 recordings. They occur so often in those 80, that it suggests the reuse of concepts, sections of dialogue, and scripts was almost rampant. This particular script was broadcast on 1946-05-07 with the title The Man Nobody Liked. I will be creating a chart of such repeats as I have been able to find them, and will be updating the Casey log as well.

ADC continuity notes...
50-04-06 TYPOS INCLUDED
A clerk in the bookkeeping department on Mr. Windber's company is found murdered and an unsuccessful attempt is made to destroy his  apartment by starting a fire. On checking with the firm, Casey and Logan learn that the cashier under whom the clerk worked had disappeared several weeks ago. Casey believes the two are connected and that that was the reason the clerk was killed. At the interview both Mr. Windber and Mr. Haywood, the V.P., wear diamond rings. ON the drive home Casey and Ann notice that a large rock has fallen off a cliff or been pried loose to create a landslide. At the clerk's apartment they find a small roll of film hidden and as they look at it they are struck from behind and the only bit of film their assailant doesn't get shows a man's hand wearing a diamond ring, and also a bit of the rock that had been pried loose. When they return to the plant, Haywood is no longer wearing his ring, so he is the killer.  Haywood is the one who stole the money. He killed the Cashier, threw his body over the cliff and then started the landslide to cover it in order that the embezzlement would be blamed on him. The clerk was killed because he had seen the whole thing and recorded it on film.

1946-05-07 The Man Nobody Liked
A clerk in the bookkeeping department on Mr. Norbitt's company is found murdered and an unsuccessful attempt is made to destroy his apartment by starting a fire. On checking with the firm, Casey and Logan learn that the cashier under whom the clerk Ronson worked had disappeared several weeks ago. Casey believes the two are connected and that that was the reason the Ronson was killed. At the interview both Mr. Norbitt and Mr. Hartwell, the V.P., wear diamond rings. On the drive home Casey and Ann notice that a large rock has fallen off a cliff or been pried loose to create a landslide. At the Ronson's apartment they find a small roll of film hidden and as they look at it they are struck from behind and the only bit of film their assailant doesn't get shows a man's hand wearing a diamond ring, and also a bit of the rock that had been pried loose. When they return to the plant, Hartwell is no longer wearing his ring, so he is the killer. Hartwell is the one who stole the money. He killed Slater, the Cashier, threw his body over the cliff and then started the landslide to cover it in order that the embezzlement would be blamed on him. Ronson was killed because he had seen the whole thing and recorded it on film.

We learn early on that the apartment was burned after someone was searching through it, and did not find what they wanted to. So they wanted to make sure that if it was there but didn't find it, that the fire would destroy it. The original thought of Casey and Logan was the fire was to cover the murder and anything else that would lead to their detection. Later they realize it was to cover up the murder and destroy additional evidence.

This is another episode where the person had photographic developing in a home. The prior episode was Murder in Black and White.

Keep track of the names: Milton is the bookkeeper, killed as part of the fire cover-up. The cashier, Crowley, is the one who uncovered the embezzlement.

Milton was killed by being struck with a piece of iron... a crowbar later figures into the story.

10:30 Essential clue: "the big white rock that looked like a warty cucumber" is a recognizable rock that fell during the landslide. Casey says it's a wonder that the rock "didn't do a Brodie a long time ago." Steve Brodie claimed to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1866, so any long fall jump went into the popular vocabulary as "do a Brodie." [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] NY Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote in his May 24, 1983 column that Brodie put sand in his socks, a lot of it, to be sure he went feet first for the dive of 135 feet and went smoothly into the water with barely a splash. Then he took his socks off underwater and came right up.

1886-07-24 NY Times
Casey, Crime Photographer - Page 6 1886-010

10:55 The old timer says someone could move the rock with a crowbar, but the rain seemed to have done it... little does he know...

11:30 Ethelbert knows Casey seems very sad not in the mood for talking. Casey admits Ann is angry at him. Ethelbert says if it's over diamonds, he knows that's a sore subject among women.

13:30 Ann tells Casey the police say it's a case of embezzlement. Casey is now figuring out the logic of the case.

15:00 Casey and Ann are at Milton's burned out apartment looking for clues. Casey finds rolled up film inside a curtain rod. Just as they're about to turn around and leave, they're both attacked and knocked out. When they become conscious, Casey finds a piece of a negative. It has part of the "cucumber rock" and part of a hand holding a crowbar, and the hand has a diamond ring on a finger!

20:05 Casey relates the full story of the case to Logan, Winber, and Haywood, and the cover-up. Crowley had figured out one of the executives was embezzling, and wanted to put the blame onto Crowley the cashier who was leaving on vacation, to make it look like he absconded with the funds. The executive threw Crowley over the edge of the cliff, then caused the landslide. Milton the bookkeeper decided to trail the executive, and took a pictures of him causing the landslide so he could blackmail him. Instead, Milton was killed, and the executive frantically searched for the films and could not find them. It was not until Casey and Ann went back to the apartment and found them hidden in the curtain rod that anyone knew where the film was, and that's when they we struck, and he got away with the film, except for a small incriminating image. Casey was not certain if it was Winber or Haywood, but when he saw that Haywood was not wearing his diamond ring, he knew who the culprit was. When he holds a gun and tries to escape, Ann knocks Haywood out with a swing of her handbag -- she has a brick in it in case she had the chance for revenge for the attack of the other day.

The diamond exchanges:
7:43 Windber wears a diamond ring that he rotated to hide or protect the stone in his hand. Casey and Ann notice.
8:47 Ann says someday she will "quit this newspaper racket, and get married, and live like a human being."
8:57 Casey asks if she picked a guy and she says "I will pick the first one that puts a diamond on my finger." Windber's diamond was big but she says that a small diamond "will do."
9:16 Casey says "personally I got no use for diamonds." Ann responds somewhat sternly "you wouldn't."
9:30 The landscape unfolds in front of them as they drive through the country. Casey says "It's nature in her fairest aspects, budding trees, new grass, birds..." and Ann says "and bees."
11:05 The old-timer says goodbye to Casey "and his Missus" and Ann yells back "I'm not his Missus... I'm not even his friend... I hate men who have no use for diamonds."
23:40 Ann finally gets a diamond ring... Winber gave Ann his diamond ring as a reward for her role in the case.

The AFRS closing is music after the Blue Note epilogue and then "This adventure of Crime Photographer starring Staat [sic] Cotsworth as Casey, came to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education."

Casey 50-04-06 335 The Fire AFRS.mp3
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There are no newspaper clippings related to this episode.

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