“One way of landing a client is to fish him out of the river. Which is exactly how I commenced my confidential file on a character named Richie Stimson.”

Barry Craig happens to be on hand to rescue Richie Stimson after he drives his car into the river. Richie is current husband and former chauffeur to Natalie Stimson, a Park Avenue millionaire. Richie claims that he wasn’t drinking, but that he has spells where he gets “dopey all of the sudden” and foggy in his head, with the feeling that he wants to shut his eyes. He claims that he drove through the guard rails during one of those spells.

Craig bills Richie $100 for his ruined clothes and shoes, not expecting payment. He is surprised to receive a check for $1000 from Natalie Stimson with a request for a meeting.

In talking to Natalie, Craig learns that the plunge into the river wasn’t Richie’s first accident. For example, several weeks earlier he fell two stories from a window and was saved only by falling on a terrace on the 26th story. According to her, six doctors have examined Richie this year, with the most recent concluding that he is a “normal neurotic” who is just accident-prone. Her own theory is that Richie feels out of his element in the rich Park Avenue environment and needs someone who “talks his language”. She feels Craig can be that someone and hires him to be Richie’s friend for $4000 for one month.

Everything goes well for a while, with Richie attending burlesque shows just like he did before his marriage. But Craig suspects that something else is wrong, especially after a talk with Richie’s brother. He claims that Richie is a snob and has always been a schemer, but that he has never been accident-prone.

After one final accident, Barry Craig is forced to untangle all of the the lies and discover the real cause for Richie’s problems.

Featuring Paul Dubov, Betty Lou Gerson, Jack Carroll, Jack Moyles

This episode was first broadcast on NBC radio on January 5, 1955. You can download it from the Internet Archive here:

Download Barry Craig – Angel of Death – January 5, 1955

In a Dodge City saloon, Thorne Finley provokes a fight with a man he believes to be a “pasty-faced tenderfoot”. Unbeknownst to him, that “dude” is actually the notorious gunfighter, Doc Holliday. Marshall Dillon recognizes his old friend, and throws Thorne in jail before the fight can continue.

Thorne’s father is Big Jack Finley, a cattle baron who owns a good portion of Kansas. Big Jack has coddled Thorne his whole life, and now uses his influence to keep his son out of jail. As Marshall Dillon notes, Thorne been arrested for 18 offenses, convicted of 10, but has spent no time in jail and paid only $15 in fines. Matt Dillon refuses to release Thorne and rejects Big Jack’s offer of a $200 a month job “protecting his interests” by ignoring Thorne’s crimes in the future. But Big Jack manages to get a judge to sign an order releasing Thorne from jail.

Doc Holliday is quite ill and under orders to go to Arizona where the dry air will be better for his lungs. He was invited by Wyatt Earp and his brothers to visit the mining town of Tombstone. But he has a “chore” to do in Dodge City first: avenge the murders of Ruth Davis and her brother. Both of their deaths were thought to be accidental, but Holliday believes they were murdered. He intends to shoot the killer: Big Jack Finley.

This is one of my favorite episodes of Gunsmoke. Veteran old time radio actor Harry Bartell’s portrayal of Doc Holliday is superb. He comes across as a seemingly mild man with an undercurrent of ruthlessness just beneath the surface.

This episode stars William Conrad as Matt Dillon and Parley Baer as Chester Proudfoot. It features Harry Bartell as Doc Holliday and also Lee Millar, Nestor Paiva, Ralph Moody, and Tom Tully. You can download it from the old time radio section of the Internet Archive here:

Download Gunsmoke – Doc Holliday – July 19, 1952

“It was Monday, June 9. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the day watch out of homicide detail. My partner’s Ben Romero. The boss is Thad Brown, chief of detectives. My name’s Friday. I was on the way back from the stats office and it was 10:18AM when I got to room 42:  Homicide.”

No one has heard from Ruth Daley’s twin sister Bernice for three months. Ruth wasn’t initially concerned because Bernice has a history of leaving without telling anyone, even traveling to Arizona for a month the previous year. But the behavior of Bernice’s husband, James Butler (Harry Bartell), concerns her. When Ruth last spoke to him, he refused to speak about Bernice. His only comment was: “You’d be surprised if I killed her, wouldn’t you? You’d be surprised.”

Ruth describes Butler as a “milquetoast character, timid, skinny, most of the time afraid to say boo”. But when Friday and Romero question Butler, his behavior is anything but timid. He claims to be a gangster, brags about previous problems with the law, and mentions that he beat his wife and threatened to kill her several times. He also states that he is clever enough to dispose of a body without getting caught.

Friday and Romero can find no confirmation for Butler’s wild claims, and are inclined to dismiss his statements as insane boasting. Even the discovery of a blood-stained hammer in his attic leads nowhere. When Friday and Romero help Ruth in an attempt to trap Butler into a confession, things goes badly wrong. The truth is finally revealed, but it is stranger than anyone could have expected.

This episode was first broadcast on NBC radio on August 30, 1951 and was sponsored by Fatima Cigarettes. It was reworked for television in 1958 as The Big Irony. You can download it from the Internet Archive here:

Download Dragnet – The Big Crazy – August 30, 1951