Front Page Detective aired on the DuMont Television Network from July 6, 1951, to September 19, 1952, and then in October to November, 1953, for a total of 38 episodes. Less than half of the episodes survive.
Edmond Lowe starred as newspaper columnist who usually helps police solve difficult mysteries but in this episode, a notorious gangster has been subpoenaed before a Congressional committee to testify. Chase gets on the same train as the gangster in hopes of getting an exclusive interview, but Chase soon learns that there are other criminals on the train who don't want the gangster to testify. Lyle Talbot is featured as "Big Dutch " Oliver; also in the cast are John Sebastian (no, not that one) as Rocco Valenti, John Harmon and Angelo Rossitto as Danny and Jimmie Trumpet, Pamela Blake (billed as Pam MaGuire) as Vicki Gerard, and Pat Gleason as the conductor. Series semi-regulars Frank Jenks, Paula Drew, and George Pembroke dis not appear in this episode.
Front Page Detective got its title from the true crime magazine that ran from 1936 to 1995. Featuring such stories as "G-Man's Revnge," "Solving Chicago's Horror in the Y.W.C.A.," "The /Curious Case of the Kitty Litter Killer," and "Who Garroted the Good-Time Girl?", Front Page Detective straddled the line between a crime magazine and a men's adventure magazine. Supposedly, the episodes shown on the tlevision show were inspired by articles from the magazine. The pulpish flavor of this particuloar episode (can you tell from the characters' names?) was enhanced by a script co-written by Robert Leslie Bellam, the author of some 3000 pulp stories and creator of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. Bellam's co-author was writer/producer Herbert Moulton, who wrote scripts for Racket Squad, Eyewitness, and five other episodes of Front Page Detective, as well as producing 30 episodes of the Dick Tracy Television Show.
Front Page Detective got off on a rocky start. Initial episodes ran against the Kefauver Hearings into organized crime, leaving the nascent crime television show looking like a weak sister when compared to the real thing. Sci transit gloria mundi...
Nonetheless, enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvg1w76rIIM&t=29s
As you probably remember, a whole lot of the then-surviving kinescopes (and perhaps even early videotape) from DuMont's storage facilities were summarily dumped offshore in an apparently not-uncommon and yet not completely legal (and, of course, both insanely wasteful and polluting) manner not so very long after the network closed shop.
ReplyDeleteTrue (or "true") crime magazines and men's sweat titles were pretty close in appeal at their height...I wasn't aware that FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE managed to last till '95, but given how many of that lot were still in writers' market guides in the '80s, I'm not too surprised.
So, actor John Sebastian isn't at any point given lines to the effect that "Did you ever have to finally decide?"