Casey, Crime Photographer

Thanks Greybelt great pic's

I'm just catching up on listening to the final few episodes. I just listed to 50-06-15 345 Unlucky Numbers, and the story sounded very familiar. The story is almost identical to an episode of the Big Story 07-21-48 about a lottery racket. Same writer, and some of the dialogue in the Casey episode was almost identical to the dialogue in the Big Story episode.

You are absolutely right!

This is the writing credit for The Big Story of 1948-07-21:

Here's the script...
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When I was listening and doing the write-up, the reason I mentioned that "numbers" was called "lottery" in the South was because of the research we did on The Big Story last year.  

But I didn't make more of a connection than that! So thank you very very much!

And now we understand why there was credit for both Gail and Harry for the Casey episode. Gail wrote The Big Story episode, and Harry's part of the collaboration was Casey-izing it!

It is fascinating to have the script in front of you as you're listening to the Casey recording.

Gail and Harry each contributed scripts to The Big Story. After Harry's death, Gail contributed scripts to The Big Story television series.

This chart shows some of the changes Harry made to the script:


The ending is much different and is newly written. The epilogue at the Blue Note has some similarities to the Big Story script.

This is an interesting side story about a Toni-era program that is missing. It's You are the Killer broadcast on March 3, 1949. It's the only Casey that I have found that is drawn from a real life news story.

These are the ADC continuity notes for the episode:


This is the CBS press release:


These are clips for the episode:


This was one of those situations where I stumbled on the entire story by accident. I've even forgotten the specifics of what I was originally searching for!

This is the clip that sent me exploring... the photographer mentioned is Pat Candido of the New York Daily News.


Pat tells the story to Popular Photography magazine.


This is the news story behind it. A crazed man shoots a priest hearing confessions. The priest is shot in the leg and survives. Cole changes the story to a judge and makes some other adjustments.

This is some of the original NYDN coverage.

Major revisions to the Casey log
This is the new link:
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PDF snapshot as of 12:15pm Eastern US Apr 13, 2020
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Found an error in the PDF and also made some formatting enhancements
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Stunning work and much appreciated, greybelt.

Thank you greybelt for the great work you did on this series. All the Information is truly amazing! This series is one of my favorites.

If you downloaded the PDF of the log, please re-download it now. Found an error in the PDF and also made some formatting enhancements
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ONE LAST TIME
for a while at least... I promise!

A newly revised version of the Casey log is at
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Thanks to some help of fellow OTRR members at the groups.io site, a correction was made to a couple of entries. The process of hunting down those errors led me to review all of the CBS press releases I have which brought some other curious items to focus, and those have been corrected as well.

This was all tedious work and it felt really really good to be done and have many of those issues settled!

There may be some other resources that can help with clarification and verification, but those are likely many weeks away from being available with various closures and hours limitations of libraries and other institutions.

I still believe there are many more repeated scripts to be identified. Of the 67 Philip Morris broadcasts, only 30 were new scripts, and that does not include "Thunderbolt" which takes large portions of plot and dialogue of "Gentle Strangler" but not the script in its entirety.

This is a link to the PDF version of the spreadsheet.
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This file should be considered as a "snapshot" of the information as of the morning of April 16, 2020
Always check the online spreadsheet for the latest information.

And remember the blog
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for further news and an update on the project

THANK you again so very much for your help!

You are an inspiration, greybelt. I need to get hypnotized by my research as soon as possible. Thanks for an invaluable resource.

For some reason, none of my searches of data bases came up with a review of Flashgun Casey though I had heard there was one.

Thanks to a helpful friend in OTRdom, this is a review from Variety that gives some details about the cast.


I'm still having a lot of trouble finding a source that details when Herman Chittison joined the cast. I can find lots of information about the gigs he was doing around the country, but not about Casey.

Thanks for all your great research, greybelt. Do you have all the Casey reviews from Variety? I think they reviewed the show just about every year.

I can't find any other Variety reviews of the radio program beyond this one, but I can of the some of the TV attempts and the TV series.

I have the Billboard review of the first Anchor-Hocking episode (1946-08-08), and the first Toni episode.

I can't find any others. I tried looking in Variety and Billboard again for a Casey, Press Photographer review to see if that mentions Chittison. None came up.

Many of the notes for the series have now been organized for convenience at
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Staats Cotsworth is in an episode of General Electric Theater, "Go Fight City Hall" at about the 4:55 mark. The video is a little blurry, but he's there...

He plays a brilliant Walter. Best to shut your eyes to recognise him.

CASEY CRIME PHOTOGRAPHER presentation today, September 26 at 1 pm Eastern, during the virtual Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. The event is on the following Facebook page [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
The slide presentation has been pre-recorded and moves along quickly, and is packed lots of information and listening suggestions. BUT, I will be taking Q&A LIVE (on video if all goes well) immediately after, beginning at about 1:40pm. You can send questions during the presentation, too. This way we can start answering questions right away.
BE SURE TO REFRESH YOUR SCREEN at 1pm to ensure you can catch the event on time. You may need to scroll down a little bit to see the post where it will be streamed.

Watch the archived events!

2020 Virtual MANC Casey Crime Photographer presentation
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Post-presentation Q&A
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The Casey presentation will be coming down from Facebook shortly, and it is now available at YouTube

The link is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The slides are at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Or just go to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] where they can also be accessed with all other kinds of things Caseyish

Thanks, greybelt. I look forward to watching your presentation!

Got a note on the OTRR FB page that the CBS promo show for the 1946 season, "Stars in the Afternoon," features the CBS detective programs with cameos by the stars. The recording is at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The segment starts around the 36 minute mark. They keep pressing the tag line "Got it! Look for it in the Morning Express!" as one of the running jokes. They had stopped using it in the program for the most part, but I guess it hung on enough for the writers to play with it in the skit. (Hat Tip to Adam Graham @ the OTRR FB page)

Hooray! A missing Casey episode performed as a recreation starring Staats Cotsworth!

Death of a Rattlesnake originally aired on December 17, 1945. The script was actually a re-use of the April 10, 1945 script Account Settled but was renamed for the second broadcast. The recreation stars Cotsworth, but none of the other original cast members were in the recreation. It featured Vicki Vola, Marvin Miller, Frank Nelson, and Betty Wragge. Music was by organist Ashley Miller (numerous radio and TV soap operas). The program was directed by Ira Ashley with sound effects by Ed Blainey and Walt Gustafson. This is the only surviving production of this script; neither of the 1940s productions have survived in recorded form.

Ed Blainey became a close friend of ours but unfortunately passed away before our wedding in 1979, weeks after retiring from ABC at age 63. The first recordings I had of this recreation event were cassettes Ed had... but Casey was not in them. I stumbled on this particular recording on a reel in the Kelez-Falk collection, which also had the others. They were likely recorded on cassettes when they were done live. I was able to clean them up much better today than I could do all those years ago.

The Casey recording is at
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But all four of the recordings can be accessed at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks greybelt

Best regards
Art

Thanks Greybelt you always come up with these interesting radio shows . had just finished listening to Casey last week guess this will cmplete the collection , for now

Does the recreation of Romance of Helen Trent exist?