The Adventures of Sam Spade

The Adventures of Sam Spade was first heard on ABC July 12, 1946, as a Friday-night summer series. The show clicked at once, and went into a regular fall lineup on CBS September 29, 1946. From then until 1949, Sam Spade was a Sunday-night thriller for Wildroot Cream Oil, starring Howard Duff in the title role. With Duff's departure, NBC took the series, leaving it on Sunday for Wildroot and starring Stephen Dunne as Spade. This version lasted until 1951, the last year running as a Friday sustainer.

Spade's appearance on the air marked an almost literal transition from Dashiell Hammett's 1930 crime classic, The Maltese Falcon, where he first appeared. Spade was a San Francisco detective, one of the most distinctive of the hardboiled school. His jump to radio was wrought by William Spier, who had already carved out a reputation as a master of mystery in his direction of another highly rated CBS thriller, Suspense.

Sam Spade shot him to national fame. The character, as Spier saw it, would Have many easily identifiable traits. The first thing Spade usually wanted to know was, "How much money you got on you?" "Two hundred? Okay, I'll take that and you can pay me the rest later." But Spade wasn't a spendthrift -- he never threw silver-dollar tips a la Johnny Dollar, even if he could have put it on his expense account. Spade favorite way to travel was by streetcar; it took him almost anywhere for a dime. He disliked cabs and liked cheap booze. You didn't need more than an occasional, subtle reminder: those glasses clinking every week as Sam opened his desk drawer and began dictation were enough. We knew Sam and Effie weren't toasting each other with Sal Hepatica. Sam was a man who worked out of his desk, and the thing closest at hand in that top drawer just might be a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad.

His clients got bumped off with startling regularity. Then Sam sent his report (and presumably his bill) to the widows. He dictated his cases to his faithful secretary, Effie Perrine, a babbling, man-hungry female who might have been the adult Corliss Archer. Each case came out as a report, dated, signed, and delivered. Spade license number - 137596 - was always included in the report. The cases unfolded in chronological order, the scenes shifting between Sam and Effie and the dramatization of Sam's dictation. Effie, who always seemed on the verge of tears whenever Sam became involved (as he did weekly) with a curvy client, was beautifully played by Lurene Tuttle, Jerry Hausner played Sam's lawyer, Sid Weiss. Lud Gluskin directed the music and Dick Joy announced. Soon after the series began, Ann Lorraine dropped her writing duties, and Gil Doud became Bob Tallman's writing partner.

The show ran in its original format through the episode of September 17, 1950. Then Howard Duff quit for a fling at movies, and Sam Spade languished for two months. On November 17, 1950, it returned on NBC. Duff's absence was handled in usual network form: by importing a new voice. NBC ran the show as though nothing had happened, using Steve Dunne as a boyish-sounding Spade. Spier and Miss Tuttle followed the series over, and for a time so did Wildroot. Wildroot and the listeners all got wise around the same time. Dunne was a good radio man, but he sounded like Sam in knee pants.

Duff once said that Hammett had done such a great job in The Maltese Falcon that any actor could have played Sam and become a radio hero. He saw that theory proved wrong.

Dashiell Hammett's name was removed from the series in the late 1940s because he was being investigated for involvement with the Communist Party. Later, when Howard Duff's name appeared in the Red Channels book, he was not invited to play the role when the series made the switch to NBC in 1950.

Ben Alexander

Ben Alexander was an Emmy-nominated American motion picture actor, who started out as a child actor in 1916. 

He was born in Goldfield, Nevada on June 27, 1911, and raised in California. Alexander made his screen debut at age of five in Every Pearl a Tear. He went on to portray Lillian Gish’s young brother in D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World. After a number of silent era films, he retired from screen work but came back for the World War I classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, in which Alexander made his first positive impression as an adult actor in the role of Kemmerick, the tragic amputation victim.

When Alexander’s acting career slowed down in the mid-1930s, he found a new career as a successful radio announcer in the late 1940’s, including for The Martin and Lewis Show, and in 1952, Jack Webb chose him to replace Barton Yarborough, who had suddenly and unexpectedly died and had played Friday’s original partner, Ben Romero. A few actors filled in as Friday’s partners until Alexander was hired as a permanent replacement in the newly created role of Officer Frank Smith, first, in the radio series, and then, in the TV series Dragnet.

On July 5, 1969, Alexander died because of a massive heart attack in his Los Angeles home when his wife and children returned from a camping trip.

Ben Alexander was awarded three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television, radio, and movies.

CLASSIC OLD TIME RADIO is back!

The new CLASSIC OLD TIME RADIO is back with new great old time radio shows! Enjoy the most remembered old time radio shows from 1930 to 1960. Mystery, adventure, suspense, drama, comedy, scifi... a great variety of shows broadcasted 24/7! Info and links on the right column of this blog.

 

And every Friday, keep enjoying the life and career of old time radio actors and actresses as well as the history of different old time radio shows. 

 

Mason Adams

Mason Adams (February 26, 1919 - April 26, 2005) was an American voice actor and actor.

Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was of Jewish descent. He earned a master's degree in Performing and Speech Arts from the University of Michigan. He also studied Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He made his debut in 1940 in a summer play at the Hilltop Theater in Baltimore.

Adams worked on many radio programs during the Golden Age of Radio. A notable recurring role was that of Pepper Young on Pepper Young's Family, which ran from 1947 to 1959. He also portrayed the deadly Nazi Atomic Man in a classic 1945 serial on the radio version of The Adventures of Superman.

During the 1970s, Adams was a co-star of the NBC soap opera Another World, and in 1976, he was in the original 1976 Broadway cast for Checking Out.

Adams is perhaps most famous for his role as editor-in-chief Charlie Hume in the television series Lou Grant, which ran from 1977 to 1982. During his work on Lou Grant, Adams performed perhaps his most important role, as the President of the United States in the film Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981), with Sam Neill.

During the 1960s he was ubiquitous in television commercials for food and other household products, most notably for Chiffon margarine and Crest toothpaste (“Helps stop cavities before they start”). He also did the voice part for television commercials for Smucker's canned goods (“With a name like Smucker's, it's got to be good!”). He resumed this work in his later years.

Beginning in the 1980s, Adams did the voiceover for the commercial for Cadbury Creme eggs, which were advertised on television with Adams' catchy catchphrase: “Nobody knows Easter better than him.” He was the announcer for Lysol disinfectant (in 1986). Adams also did radio commercials for the Salvation Army. In addition, Adams was the narrator for Kix commercials in the 1990s, as well as in some Dentyne and Swanson's commercials. He was also the television promotional news announcer for WCBS (in 1992).

In one of the first episodes of Sesame Street, he played the narrator and voiced a cartoon with a jazzy triangle, and a slightly “square” square (with jazz music in the background). This caricature would be repeated on the show for many years well into the 1980s.

In the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon he portrayed Senator Clinton P. Anderson. During the 1970s he co-starred in the NBC soap opera Another World.

He was married to Margot Feinberg (1957-2005). They had a daughter, Betsy, and a son, Bill. Adams died on April 26, 2005 in Manhattan, of natural causes.