I use an electronic sleeping aid. Each night for the last twenty-five years, I’ve fallen asleep with an earphone plugged into my smart phone listening to old-time radio shows. All the great names of the 1940s and ’50s are available as podcasts at the iTunes store. You can find these great shows and many more: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Night Beat with Randy Stone, Jeff Regan, Investigator, and two of my personal favorites, Dragnet and Pat Novak for Hire.
The Lux Radio Theatre recreates recent box office winners for radio listeners, and Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air continues to thrill audiences after its groundbreaking War of the Worlds broadcast. There’s also great timeless comedy on The Jack Benny Show and another favorite, The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show. Whether it’s adventure, drama, mystery, or comedy, these shows were well written and delivered. The impeccable comedic timing of the radio comedies is the stuff of legends. Television brought about radio theater’s demise in the late 50s. However, in the early 70s, the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre’s Old Time Radio veteran producer made a noble attempt to revive the genre with 1399 radio mysteries for modern audiences.
The problem with Old Time Radio as a sleeping aid is that I usually nod off twenty minutes ahead of the climax. I often have to backtrack the next night or during a 3 a.m. fit of restlessness to learn the show’s resolution. I live my sleeping hours just shy of the denouement.
The radio dramas have predictable patterns distinguished only by the personalities of the stars or the cleverness of the writers. Theft is a common theme and occasionally insurance fraud works its way in. There are always gangsters and bad guys and the women who love them. Typically, the main bad guy has a less intelligent sidekick and a female friend who has made poor decisions her entire life. Murder by handgun is frequently heard and usually includes a scene including three shots fired followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. This is usually followed by either a death-bed confession or unintelligible words that prolong the mystery of whodunit.
Dragnet is a favorite as it retells true stories of crime in Los Angeles with the deadpan delivery of the one and only Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday. Together, with his partners Frank Smith and Ben Ramero, they worked the story from crime to punishment in stories involving missing persons, robbery, and kidnapping.
Another Jack Webb show was Pat Novak for Hire, a particular favorite. It was a typical crime story set in San Francisco, but the writing was so unusual. In fact, the introduction of each show opens with the words, “The American Broadcasting Company now brings you one of radio’s most unusual programs.” Raymond Burr co-stars as Novak’s constant thorn in the side in Burr’s role as Inspector Hellmann. Hellmann blames every murder in San Francisco on Novak, who finds himself sucked into wayward waterfront deals, usually involving international shipping.
Again, it’s the writing that’s so different from the other shows. The line used in the title of this post is one example, as he describes his fall to the floor after being sucker punched by a hoodlum: “I fell to the floor like a bad sock on a bony leg.”
There’s a constant cadence to the scripts. On average, every fourth line carries a simile or a clever turn of phrase. The writing style carried over to other crime dramas starring Webb: Jeff Regan Investigator had a similar style where as the show, Joe Modero, was nearly a clone of Pat Novak For Hire with little more than a change of names for the characters. But in Pat Novak for Hire, the writing style was at its best and demonstrated the uniqueness of the writers.
Here are a few other lines from the mid-50s radio show Pat Novak for Hire:
“She was at least 50, because you can’t get that ugly without years of experience.“
“She stood leaning there for a minute, sort of a girl who moves when she stands still. She had blonde hair. She was kind of pretty, except you could see somebody had used her badly, like a dictionary in a stupid family.“
“Is he dead? Yeah, he couldn’t stand the bleeding.“
“Hellmann, you ought to rent an idiot. The heavy thinking’s too much for you.“
“She walked with a nice friendly movement, like the trap door on a gallows.“
“He slipped out of my arms and stopped paying taxes.“
“I’ve helped you get up so much I feel like one of the Wright brothers.“
“I knew I had no more business here than second trumpet in a string quartet.“
“She was the kind of girl you’d like to meet in the choir loft after rehearsal was over. Her hair was red, and her eyes were about as cold as rigor mortis. And you knew the first time you met her, you’d been seeing her too often.“
“She had nice hair, and the dress helped too. It was dark blue and had v-neck, but the designer believe in big letters.“
If you’re looking to relax, I’d recommend the relaxing rhythm of half-hour dramas from Old Time Radio. And for a full measure of mirth, tune in to the timeless humor of Jack Benny and Phil Harris.
I’ll close with the ever present sign off from the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, as host E.G. Marshall would always say…”Pleasant dreams?
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Great writing by the author of this blog as well! I’m game to try! What kind of ear phones do you use that allows you to sleep with them in?
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I’m a side sleeper so I just use one side of my iPhone earbuds in the ear opposite my pillow.
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