January 30, 2015
“Dead men’s wills are often strange. We cannot attempt to understand them or try to find the answers. We can but tell the story.”
Normally, a Last Will and Testament is a serious, cut-and-dry, black-and-white document. Not so in the case of Strange Wills!
So begins the radio show Strange Wills, a mystery-adventures series produced and syndicated by Teleways Radio Productions of Hollywood beginning in 1946. It starred distinguished Hollywood actor Warren William as probate attorney Warren Francis O’Connell, and the stories were told through his eyes as executor of the “strange wills made by strange people”. These cases, built around unusual bequests or searches for missing heirs, were based on the seven deadly sins, and complied by attorney Ken Krippene over a ten-year period, changing the names for broadcast.
Produced by Robert Webster Light, the show also starred actors Carlton Young and Howard Culver, and featured the music of Del Castillio. Telling the “strange stories of strange wills made under strange circumstances”, it ventured into a number of genres, including suspense, romance, psychological drama, comedy, love, intrigue and even horror.
At the time, there was nothing else like Strange Wills on the air. The thirty-minute stories included a Broadway producer who willed an actress to a rival out of love, an heiress who gave her son the choice between inheriting her financial empire or $5000 and a plane ticket to Paris, a case of murder on the Scottish moors, a burlesque dancer willed a fortune in emeralds, a young man who is scheduled to be executed from a crime that he didn’t commit, the life story of a Stradivarius violin, and a pirate who carved his will into the back of a woman!
Strange Wills was also broadcast in Australia. Expertly restored from original transcription discs for Sparkling Audio Quality by Radio Archives.
7 hours - $10.49 Download / $20.98 Audio CDs
Free My Little Margie Bonus offer
For the next two weeks we will include in every order being mailed, a DVD of My Little Margie.
Gale Storm plays a young woman who lives with her widowed father Vern played by Charles Farrell in a Fifth Avenue apartment. Somehow, despite the best of intentions, Margie always manages to find a way to get her father into some kind of trouble. On this DVD, you'll enjoy three madcap television shows from 1952 and 1953.
There is nothing you need to do to receive this free bonus. It will be put in your shipping box automatically.
Special 50% discount Offer
featuring a set from the Detectives category
“Personal notice: danger’s my stock in trade. If the job’s too tough for you to handle, you’ve got a job for me, George Valentine.”
Old-time radio fans love and revere actor Bob Bailey - particularly when it comes to his long-running stint as “America’s favorite freelance investigator” on the classic radio crime drama Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar in the 1950s. But before landing that lucrative gig, “Robert” Bailey cut his teeth on another detective show favorite that ran on the West Coast Mutual-Don Lee network from October 18, 1946 to September 27, 1954: a decidedly offbeat private-eye series entitled Let George Do It. During its original run, George’s audience was limited to a West Coast listenership and, although transcribed repeats were heard in New York City from January 20, 1954 through January 12, 1955, it wasn’t until much later that the show was appreciated by a small but devoted audience who enjoyed the series as a cut above the usual hard-boiled detective offerings.
George Valentine was an ex-cop-turned-private-investigator who set himself apart from his private eye brethren - at least, in the early episodes - by eschewing tough-guy muscle in favor of a certain manual dexterity and analytical thinking skills. His cases ran the gamut from murder to blackmail to kidnapping. The episodes offered in this collection originate from vinyl transcription discs syndicated by the New York-based Harry S. Goodman Radio Productions and were originally syndicated throughout Canada by S. W. Caldwell Ltd. Thanks to expert transfers and complete audio restoration, the crystal clear recordings in this ten-hour set lets you really hear what happens when you Let George Do It.
Specially priced until February 12th. 10 hours - $7.49 Download / $14.99 Audio CDs
Special 50% discount Offer
featuring a set from the Family Favorites category
“That’s how it is with the Barbours today...”
One Man’s Family was created by radio’s triple-threat genius writer-director-producer Carlton E. Morse and premiered locally over NBC’s San Francisco affiliate KGO on April 26, 1932. Morse would later go on to create many of radio’s memorable shows - in particular, the blood-and-thunder serial “I Love a Mystery” - but “One Man’s Family” most assuredly stands out as his crowning achievement. It is the embodiment of the old adage that “less is more;” a simple, unsophisticated half-hour that eavesdropped each week on the lives of the Barbour family, a close-knit, well-to-do clan who resided in the tony Sea Cliff area of San Francisco.
The head of the Barbours was patriarch Henry, an individual who may very well be one of the most complex characters in the history of radio drama. A conservative stockbroker who ruled over his clan with an iron hand, he would gradually be transformed over the series’ lengthy run into a crusty curmudgeon (“Yes, yes...”) whom it cannot be said was merely stubborn; he was the yardstick by which mule-headedness was measured. He was completely and thoroughly adored by his family - wife Fanny and children Paul, Hazel, Clifford, Claudia and Jack - despite that his obstinate ways could often drive each member of his brood to the point of exasperation. As daughter Hazel describes him in a broadcast included in this collection, “He never does anything in half-measures...if he loves, he loves wholeheartedly...if he indulges, he overindulges...and when he becomes the disciplinarian, he’s the strictest martinet of them all.”
In this collection, Radio Archives is pleased to present six hours of sequential radio broadcasts from the pen of Carlton E. Morse; twelve original episodes originally broadcast between July 11 and September 26, 1949.
Specially priced until February 12th. 6 hours - $4.49 Download / $8.99 Audio CDs
Transcription Discs
Radio Archives has chosen the Broadway Records Auction company to sell 9,000 of our transcription discs over the next several years. By special arrangement with Marc Friend, the owner of Broadway Records, all the unsold transcription discs from the last auction will be listed exclusively on the Radio Archives website after the auction ends.
The discs will be sold on a first come basis for the minimum bid. The next auction starts on February 15th. If you would like to receive the next auction list by email, click here. broadwayrecords@gmail.com.
A Message from Will Murray
Now that the Christmas selling season is over, we’ve been reflecting on the increasing popularity of downloading the Will Murray Pulp Classics audiobooks instead of ordering the CD sets. The variety of portable devices through which people can listen to their audio entertainment is growing fast. Smart phones, tablets, etc. It made us curious: When you listen to a WMPC audiobook, what’s your preferred device? Tell us. We’re interested in knowing. —Will
Will Murray's Pulp Classics #70
Read by Nick Santa Maria. Liner Notes by Will Murray
Mysterious death, suicide, and madness took uncanny toll of New York’s most prominent citizens. Only the Spider sensed the presence of the criminal genius whose tentacles were strangling the city—and the Spider was next on the crime monster’s death list!
Here, in answer to many requests, is the second and final Spider novel penned by the mysterious R. T. M. Scott. The Wheel of Death first appeared in the November, 1933 issue of The Spider magazine. With the next issue the byline changed to Grant Stockbridge, a house pseudonym concealing the great Norvell Page.
To this day, over eighty years later, the mystery of Scott’s departure remains unsolved. R.T. M. Scott was a famous byline in the 1920s and ’30s, the author of a series of hardcover novels featuring sophisticated detective Aurelius Smith and his Hindu aide, Langa Doonh. They were the template for Richard Wentworth and Ram Singh.
But there were two R. T. M. Scotts, father and son. And the son worked for Popular Publications under the name Maitland Scott! So, which Scott initiated the Spider series? There are two clues. One, that Popular Publications president Harry Steeger remembered the Spider author as a younger man. Another is that a later Terror Tales story bylined Maitland Scott, “Shadows of Desire,” featured a villain named Ram Singh!
One of the more intriguing theories posits that R. T. M. Scott Senior penned The Spider Strikes and, having kicked off the series in grand style, handed it off to his son, who was 24 at that time. Whatever the case was, neither man was likely up to the job of writing a monthly pulp novel. Enter Norvell Page.
The Wheel of Death is a crime story set in New York City and revolves around a strange after-hours nightclub catering to the elite. Donning the disguise of a hardened gangster, Dick Wentworth, alias the Spider, penetrates this place, and allies himself with Molly Dennis, a young woman whose father sits on Death Row, awaiting execution for a crime he may not have committed. What is the secret of Grogan’s Restaurant? Can he unravel a web of blackmail without revealing that Richard Wentworth is secretly the Spider?
Nick Santa Maria reads this exciting suspense story of murder, mayhem and mystery that perfectly evokes 1933 Manhattan.
5 hours - $9.99 Download / $19.98 Audio CDs
Will Murray's Pulp Classics #71
Read by Alan Taylor. Liner Notes by Will Murray
One of the most daring series ever to emerge from Harry Steeger’s Popular Publications came when he converted Battle Birds magazine to Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birdsback in 1934. Not content to tell tales of World War I, the new title focused on forecasting the Next War!
As Robert Sidney Bowen, the writer Steeger trusted to fill its monthly pages, recalled:
“Frankly, it was a spur of the moment thing that Harry Steeger and I cooked up one day in 1933 when we were having lunch together. It was this way, as near as I can remember it. At the time I was turning out some one hundred and fifty yarns a year of all types and lengths. War-air stories, gangland stories, mystery stories, sports stories, detective stories, adventure stories, and what have you. And I was sort of tired of banging out one kind of story one day and another kind of the next, etc. Well, at the time one of the mags that Harry was publishing was G-8 and His Battle Aces, and the whole mag was being written once a month by Robert J. Hogan, a very popular writer, and a very swell guy.
“Anyway, I happened to mention to Harry that I’d like to do a whole magazine a month like Bob was doing. And Harry said, ‘Okay, let’s think up something.’ Well, naturally I didn’t want to do a mag that would be in direct competition with Bob’s, so that type was out. Well, Harry and I tossed ideas at each other during the rest of the lunch and came up with the idea of an air-war magazine but about a war in the future. Of course it wouldn’t be wise to write about a war in the future between the U. S. and some other country in the world. So we decided to make the enemy a bunch that rose up out of darkest eastern Asia and started to conquer the world. I took it from there and doped out the series and wrote it. I wrote every darn word in the twelve issues that were published. By the twelfth issue I’d had it up to here with sweet little Dusty Ayres, and as it was no big gold mine for Harry we decided to call it a day, and I went back to knocking out a variety of pulp yarns.
“So, that was the way Dusty Ayres was born. And as far as I know it was the only future air-war thing that Popular ever published. And when Harry and I doped it up neither of us had any idea that there would be another world wide war. Way back in those days World War I was still supposed to be the war to end all wars.”
Set in an indeterminate future, the new series was out-and-out-science fiction built around the popular aviation genre. Flying the futuristic Silver Flash aircraft, backed up by wingmen Curly Brooks and Biff Bolton, Captain Dusty Ayres strove every month to beat back the forces of the modern Genghis Khan called Fire-Eyes, who had conquered all but North America.
In this, the first series outing, the assault on America commences. With Europe in the grasping hands of the Black Invaders and the U.S. Naval Fleets split by the destruction of the Panama Canal, the future looks bleak for the nation. But the Black Dart warplanes of the enemy were about to strike a wall of screaming steel––Air Group #7, commanded by Dusty Ayres!
The wonderful thing about Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds is that when Popular decided to end the series, Bowen penned a concluding chapter, tying up all loose ends, and bringing the glorious conflict to a satisfying conclusion.
So fasten your seat belts! Here starts the wildest ride in pulp aviation history!
Black Lightning is read with dazzling urgency by Alan Taylor. This audiobook also features two additional Robert Sidney Bowen stories of the war against the forces of Fire-Eyes, “The C.O.’s Coffin” and “The Smoke-Screen Ace,” read by Milton Bagby.
Join Will Murray, Robert Weinberg, Radio Archives, the Authors and Voice Actors discussing all the new audiobooks. Take a look and leave a comment.
New Will Murray's Pulp Classics eBooks
The best of timeless Pulp now available as cutting edge eBooks! Will Murray's Pulp Classics brings the greatest heroes, awesome action, and two fisted thrills to your eReader! Presenting Pulp Icons such as the Spider, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Operator #5 as well as wonderfully obscure characters like the Octopus and Captain Satan. Will Murray's Pulp Classics brings you the best of yesterday's Pulp today!
Beginning in 1932, Battle Birds brought readers a thrilling main story, referred to as a “novel”, that featured a rotating cast of main characters like The Three Mosquitoes and Smoke Wade. After nineteen issues, just over a year and a half after its debut, the magazine began to feature the air adventures of Dusty Ayres, and the magazine became officially titled Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds. This lasted until the summer of 1935 when the magazine folded after thirty-one issues. But Battle Birds wasn't finished; it would return. In early 1940, Battle Birds reappeared on the newsstands. But now the focus of the stories was on the conflict that would soon be known as World War II. This resurrected Battle Birds lasted for 26 issues until May 1944. And now Battle Birds is back, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
Dare-Devil Aces September 1940-January 1941 Death Has No Wings
The greatest adventure of our times! Mr. Myers writes the dramatic sky story of today! — and it is a story that moves across the pages of our living history with the force of a million men! There may be blood on the pages, but you will find it is the Blood of the Brave, and you will think of this novel for long years after you have read it! Burning action in the savage skies over Nazi Germany! Written as history was actually unfolding, this story mirrors the horrors of war in 1940. First Czechoslovakia fell. Then, like dominoes, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Norway and France. England was planned to be next. Day and night bombing raids over London paved the way. And against this background, "Death Has No Wings" was set.This story was originally serialized in Dare-Devil Aces magazine in four parts, beginning with the September 1940 issue. It has been compiled into a complete story here for the first time. Author O.B. Myers (Oscar B. Myers) was a decorated WWI fighter pilot. He is able to bring those experiences to life in his fiction about the air war in Europe. This ebook contains a classic story from the pages of Dare-Devil Aces magazine, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
The greatest adventure of our times! Mr. Myers writes the dramatic sky story of today! — and it is a story that moves across the pages of our living history with the force of a million men! There may be blood on the pages, but you will find it is the Blood of the Brave, and you will think of this novel for long years after you have read it! Burning action in the savage skies over Nazi Germany! Written as history was actually unfolding, this story mirrors the horrors of war in 1940. First Czechoslovakia fell. Then, like dominoes, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Norway and France. England was planned to be next. Day and night bombing raids over London paved the way. And against this background, "Death Has No Wings" was set.This story was originally serialized in Dare-Devil Aces magazine in four parts, beginning with the September 1940 issue. It has been compiled into a complete story here for the first time. Author O.B. Myers (Oscar B. Myers) was a decorated WWI fighter pilot. He is able to bring those experiences to life in his fiction about the air war in Europe. This ebook contains a classic story from the pages of Dare-Devil Aces magazine, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
Alec Watson is a fighting man you’ll want to meet — and here is the story of his loyalty and his guts, painting with blood a hostile sky, from which there is no returning! Fighting Aces was the youngest in the line of Popular Publications aviation pulps. It was strictly a product of World War II. The inaugural issue was published with a March 1940 date on the cover, as the world war was raging through Europe. After D-Day and the war began winding down, the pulp was closed down as well. After twenty-seven issues, the July 1944 magazine was the last one published. But during those glorious twenty-seven issues, American doughboys fought alongside the French, English, Australian and Canadian Allies in battle after aerial battle... pitting their skill against the Nazi scum. Fighter planes burst into flame and spiral to earth in these WWII tales of soaring action. Fighting Aces return in vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
Sports Novels Fight Classics
Sports thrills, ripped from the burning pages of one of the all-time great sports magazines of the 1930s, Sports Novels! Magazines containing sports fiction were one of the staples of the pulp magazines, becoming popular in the early 1920s and by the mid-1930s there were over two dozen titles on the newsstands. In early 1937, Popular Publications decided to enter the lucrative field of the sports fiction magazines. The April-May 1937 issue of Sports Novels hit the newsstands in late March, featuring an eye-catching baseball cover. For the next fifteen years, each issue featured stories of football, boxing, baseball, hockey, track, basketball, tennis and hockey. Nearly every sport imaginable was represented in the long-running magazine. It continued publishing for a total of eighty-five issues until the April 1952 issue, when pulp magazines were in their waning days. Vintage Sports Novels are now being reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
Sports thrills, ripped from the burning pages of one of the all-time great sports magazines of the 1930s, Sports Novels! Magazines containing sports fiction were one of the staples of the pulp magazines, becoming popular in the early 1920s and by the mid-1930s there were over two dozen titles on the newsstands. In early 1937, Popular Publications decided to enter the lucrative field of the sports fiction magazines. The April-May 1937 issue of Sports Novels hit the newsstands in late March, featuring an eye-catching baseball cover. For the next fifteen years, each issue featured stories of football, boxing, baseball, hockey, track, basketball, tennis and hockey. Nearly every sport imaginable was represented in the long-running magazine. It continued publishing for a total of eighty-five issues until the April 1952 issue, when pulp magazines were in their waning days. Vintage Sports Novels are now being reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $2.99.
Six Horror Stories 99 cent eBook Singles
Each 99 cent eBook Single contains a single short story, one of the many tales selected from the pages of Horror Stories. These short stories are not included in any of our other eBooks. Horror Stories! The dark companion to Dime Mystery Magazine. Created to showcase stories too horrible for Terror Tales. The third of the triumvirate of fear pulps. This brand of fiction came to be called Weird Menace. The mystery-and-menace formula proved so successful that publisher Popular Publications produced Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales and Horror Stories. These three dominated the Weird Menace genre all through the 1930s. Blurbed as “mystery-horror” stories instead of “mystery-terror,” Horror Stories was formulated differently that its companion titles. Damn the plot. Pour on the menace! This ebook contains a classic story from the pages of Horror Stories magazine, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format. $0.99.
All eBooks produced by Radio Archives are available in ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats for the ultimate in compatibility. When you upgrade to a new eReader, you can transfer your eBooks to your new device without the need to purchase anything new.
10% discount of Selected Doc Savage Bama covers
For the next two weeks these five Doc Savage reprints with James Bama covers are being discounted by 10%.
by Will Murray and Lester Dent, writing as Kenneth Robeson, cover illustration by Joe DeVito
When William Harper Littlejohn unearths a shadowy figure transfixed in ice, the renowned archeologist understands that he has made the most momentous discovery of his brilliant career. For inscribed over the frozen form is this chilling warning:
“IF I STILL LIVED, MANKIND WOULD TREMBLE!”
Who is this monster? Why does his name strike terror into the hearts of brave men? Can even Doc Savage control him once he breaks free of his icy tomb?
From the Gobi Desert to war-torn Free China, the Man of Bronze and his fighting crew battle a threat so terrifying that it could change the course of human history…. Softcover $24.95
The Shadow proves that "crime does not pay" in two rare mysteries by Walter B. Gibson writing as "Maxwell Grant" from the first and final years of The Shadow Magazine. First, secrets from the Dark Avenger's wartime activities behind Russian lines are revisited as The Shadow confronts "The Red Menace" of a masked revolutionary whose political machinations threaten the Free World. Then, "The Black Circle" is the secret token behind society robberies directed by The Voice in the penultimate Shadow pulp novel! This instant collector's item showcases both classic color pulp covers by Jerome and George Rozen and the original interior illustrations by Tom Lovell and Paul Orban, with original commentary by popular culture historian Will Murray. Double Novel Reprint $14.95
The Pulps' most bloodthirsty crimebuster wages his deadly war on crime in two action-packed 1935 thrillers by Norvell Page that foreshadowed a classic Spider-Man storyline. First, ruthless racketeers destroy bridges and skyscrapers, slaughtering thousands of innocents! Can the Spider unmask "The City Destroyer" before more lives are sacrificed by this murderous maniac? Then, thousands of women are hideously scarred by tainted cosmetics while American families are poisoned at their supper tables! Only Richard Wentworth can stop the deadly carnage and bring an end to the vicious plots of "The Pain Emperor." This double novel pulp reprint features the original color covers by John Newton Howitt, John Fleming Gould's classic interior illustrations and historical commentary by Will Murray. Double Novel Reprint $14.95
The last few Spider and Terror Tales Replicas are reduced in price and
are in the Bargain Basement along with Pulp Reprints, cassettes and LPs.
Comments From Our Customers!
Tom Kokenge writes:
Now that the big sale is over and I am waiting in fear of my Visa bill I just wanted to thank you for the terrific and rather fun sale. I picked up a lot of things that I have been meaning to. You and Radio Archives are a class act and your newsletter is something that I find myself looking forward to on Friday mornings. That being said, I just want to wish you and your family the best of the Season and look forward to bigger and more exciting things from you in 2015.
Mike Moritz writes about a recent Bargain Basement item:
I have been exceptionally happy with the cassettes purchased so far but, knowing where they come from, that is not surprising. I cannot thank you and Radio Archives enough for your products and service. The service has always been the best and your products are, as always, excellent. I look forward to dealing with you for many more years.
I have been exceptionally happy with the cassettes purchased so far but, knowing where they come from, that is not surprising. I cannot thank you and Radio Archives enough for your products and service. The service has always been the best and your products are, as always, excellent. I look forward to dealing with you for many more years.
Curtis Cobb writes:
To Tom and company. Thank you for your great customer service!
To Tom and company. Thank you for your great customer service!
If you'd like to share a comment with us or if you have a question or a suggestion send an email to Service@RadioArchives.com. We'd love to hear from you!
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