Inspiration

OTR Wednesday – Big Town (with an Edward G. Robinson tangent)

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Today I’m sharing another old radio show that influenced my fictional detective serial “The Darkness Knows”. This is Big Town starring Edward G. Robinson (“See?”) and Claire Trevor. Robinson plays Steve Wilson, the crusading editor of the Illustrated Press. Trevor plays his sidekick who also happens to be the society editor of the paper. This episode is from 1937 right about the time Vivian was breaking into the radio biz.

Edward G. Robinson is probably one of the stars of the golden age of Hollywood that you recognize (even if you aren’t a fan) due to his reputation for playing gangsters and his distinctive tough guy way of speaking. He’s also parodied in a that Merrie Melodies cartoon that I’ve featured before on the blog called “Hollywood Steps Out” from 1941.

And as an added bonus I’m including this episode of Suspense called “The Man who Wanted to be Edward G. Robinson” from 1946. If you think the whole pop culture meta thing is a recent invention… you have to listen to this. It’s about a henpecked husband who meets the real Edward G. Robinson and wants him to help him kill his wife because he believes he is exactly like the heartless gangsters he plays on the screen.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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And I have a HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS Pinterest board! If you’d like to peruse what the holidays looked and sounded like in late 1930s Chicago – go have a look. There’s also some gorgeous 1930s fashion, Chicago locations – and some hints about some pop culture mentioned in the book (I’m lookin at you, Rudolph Valentino).

Happy Birthday, War of the Worlds!

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I first heard the original War of the Worlds broadcast in Sister Barbara Jean’s 8th grade reading class. The first ten minutes or so gave me goose bumps and sparked my love of old time radio. It made such an impression on me that I set my first mystery, The Darkness Knows, in October 1938 to coincide with the original Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast on October 30, 1938 (a character is actually listening to the live broadcast near the end of the book).

Do yourself a favor and listen to the original (It’s brilliant and so far ahead of its time.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzC3Fg_rRJM

One of my current favorite radio shows, Radiolab, did a fascinating episode around the psychology of the broadcast – why it worked so well and what happened when it was repeated (spoiler alert – bad things): Radiolab War of the Worlds Live Episode 

There’s also a PBS documentary on the subject: American Experience War of the Worlds

Old Time Radio Wednesday – The Shadow

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Some of you may have already guessed the inspiration for the title of Vivian’s radio show and Book #1 – THE DARKNESS KNOWS. It comes from the intro to The Shadow radio show:

Who knows what evils lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

The Shadow is the crime-fighting alter ego of Lamont Cranston who has the ability to “cloud men’s minds so they can not see him”. Orson Welles played title role at the show’s inception in 1937, but he left the show in 1938. The radio version ran until 1954 with four more actors portraying Lamont during the run.

Listening to this now, I can see that this show influenced the fictional The Darkness Knows radio show in my series more than any other actual radio show – even though it’s not a “detective show” per se. This is also always the show people bring up when I talk old time radio with them. Everyone seems to know The Shadow…

Here’s an early episode starring Orson Welles.

A Father’s Love – Eddie and Butch O’Hare

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You may know that Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is named for WWII flying ace Butch O’Hare who was shot down over the Pacific in 1943. What you may not know is that the only reason Butch became a pilot at all was because of his father – lawyer, crook, and known associate of Al Capone.

Edward (Easy Eddie) O’Hare was never the most upstanding of lawyers. He bamboozled a client’s widow out of the patent to those mechanical rabbits that greyhounds chase around the racetrack.

That’s how he made his fortune, and that’s how he met Al Capone. Capone owned a greyhound track outside Chicago. They eventually became associates and business partners (and the greyhound track was turned into Sportsman’s Park for horse racing. Conveniently, Eddie became its president).

Needless to say, the 1920s were a high time for Easy Eddie, that is until the apple of his eye, his eldest son Edward Jr (known as Butch), told Eddie that he wanted to attend the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD and become a pilot. Eddie could deny his boy nothing. The problem was that the sitting local congressman needed to nominate Butch to attend the academy, and no congressman in his right mind would nominate the son of a known Capone associate. Not even in Chicago.

What was a father to do? Well, Eddie decided he needed to change his ways. Through a journalist intermediary, he made it clear to the Feds he would give them info on Capone’s organization if they helped him get his son into the Naval Academy. He did – and they did. Butch went to the academy and eventually became a fighter pilot and hero over the Pacific, but Eddie wouldn’t live long enough to witness that. Eddie was gunned down while driving his Lincoln on Ogden Avenue in November 1939. His murder remains technically unsolved, but it’s pretty safe to assume that his double-crossing of The Outfit finally caught up to him.

I’m telling you all of this, because it’s a fascinating story, but also because Easy Eddie O’Hare was the inspiration for Viv’s father, “Easy Artie” Witchell, in HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

It all started with Merrie Melodies

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Hollywood Steps Out

Clockwise from the upper left: Groucho Marx and Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Tyrone Power and Sonja Henie, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Lamour

I’ve been asked where my interest in the 1930s comes from, and I’ve always been pressed for a concrete answer – until today when it came to me as I was browsing antiques (and agonizing over whether I really had room for that gorgeous floor model Philco radio I found). I can trace almost everything back to the Merrie Melodies cartoon called “Hollywood Steps Out”. I watched hour upon hour of Looney Tunes cartoons as a kid, and I’d probably seen this particular cartoon a dozen times by the time I was ten. I loved it even then. I don’t know why exactly… I didn’t know any of the people being spoofed yet (especially not Sally Rand). But there was something about it that led me to wanting to know who every person in this cartoon was (and if you want to know they’re all listed in this Wikipedia entry). That lead to an interest in 1930s/40s movies and then to 1930s/40s culture, radio, and on and on… ad finitum.

I also loved the cartoon starring Jack Benny, his wife Mary Livingstone, and his sidekick Rochester as mice. It’s not on Youtube, but you can watch “The Mouse that Jack Built” here.