Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Thursday, June 11, 2020

THE CRIME CLUB: DEAD MAN CONTROL (MARCH 19, 1947)

Doubleday's Crime Club imprint got a boost from the Mutual Broadcasting System when it began dramatizing some of the imprint's books in 1946.  (Previously Doubleday had a deal with Universal Pictures to have eleven of their novels filmed from 1937-1939.)  Not all the offerings on the program were based on Crime Club books; at least nineteen episodes were based on Crime Club novels, with probably five or more additional episodes from the imprint.  The remainder of the 46 episodes shown were written by scripter Stedman Coles.  It should be noted that the publisher/broadcaster relationship was coy:  the Doubleday Crime Club was never specifically mentioned on the program; rather, Mutual would remind viewers weekly to go to their local bookstore and by "Crime Club" novels -- something that benefitted both the Doubleday Crime Club and the Collins Crime Club editions.

Authors whose books were adapted for the show include Margery Allingham, Aaron Marc Stein (and his alter ego George Bagby), Constance and Gwenyth Little, D. B. Olson, Kathleen Moore Knight, and Helen Reilly.  "Dead Man Control" was the seventeenth episode in the program and was taken from Helen Reilly's 1936 Inspector Christopher McKee mystery novel.  Reilly's novel is a "locked room" mystery set among the super-rich of Manhattan.

"Dead Man Control" features the voice talents of Ted Osborn and Alice Frost.

Time to sit back and enjoy this late-Golden Age mystery.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQo_Xujyy7Y

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