Danger With Grainger
Well after the recent poll, I'm really happy to see that nearly everyone said that they do enjoy reading the editorials which Joy and I write for the RUSC members home page.
We both enjoy digging around in old books, magazines, and newspapers, listening to lots of old time radio shows, and browsing online, so we're always bursting with inspiration to write pieces about old time radio shows, stars and series - along with all of the other interesting facts, and related topics which we've written about over the years. Joy loves the historical pieces, where as I especially love finding new series to review.
At the moment, I'm going through a very old cassette tape collection, which was donated to Joy and I quite some time ago by one of our wonderful RUSC friends. He didn't want his collection to be tossed away after he was gone, so asked if we would take care of it for him. There have been some real gems on there, and some series that I'd never heard of before, such as the series we've recently added, called Danger with Grainger.
Steve Grainger was a typical hard-boiled detective, whose cases involved crimes from murder, to robbery, to smuggling. The series came much later in the golden age of radio, and sadly seemed to have 'missed the boat' in the hard-boiled detective genre, as it never saw the success of its predecessors such as Pat Novak For Hire, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Adventures of Philip Marlowe, and my personal favorite, Dragnet.
The series premièred on the Mutual Network on July 23 1956, and then aired each Monday evening at 8:30pm, until the final broadcast, which was on February 25 1957.
Each show was a half hour of Steve Grainger operating his private detective practice from New York City, solving crime cases alongside the police, FBI and other law enforcement agencies. It featured a small cast of characters, with him relying quite heavily on his pal Cal Hendricks, a news journalist who breaks the news stories, and police detective Jake Rankin, who Steve has a rather close-fisted relationship with.
The shows are loaded with some great tough-guy talk, and witty analogies, such as these:-
- "He was as slippery as an eel dipped in olive oil"
- "She vanished quicker than snowflakes in a heatwave"
- "He was holed up as securely as a gopher in sub zero weather"
- "Business was slower than a fifth avenue bus in a blizzard"
My sources say that there are at least 28 of the episodes extant, and our collection boasts 25 of these, so I'll keep searching for the three we don't have yet!
Detective shows have always been the most popular genre in old time radio, so I'd love to know what you think of Danger With Grainger. Just add your comments below!
Happy listening my friends,