Blackstone, the Magic Detective
Blackstone, the Magic Detective was a fifteen-minute series broadcast Sunday afternoons on the Mutual Broadcasting System from October 1948 to April 1949.
Radio
The Damon Runyon Theatre
Syndicated (Mayfair)
Syndicated (Mayfair) · 1940–1950
104 EpisodesFortnightlyPGSince 1940
The run
- Network
- Syndicated (Mayfair)
- Years active
- 1940–1950
- Surviving broadcasts
- 104
- Genre
- theatre
THE DAMON RUNYON THEATRE The Damon Runyon Theatre was another of Alan Ladd's Mayfair Transcription Company productions. Ladd, long an admirer of 'The Brighter Side', Damon Runyon's long-running newspaper column, initially signed Pat O'Brien to star as 'Broadway' in the program. Indeed we have an alleged audition from the program, titled "Princess O'Hara" in which O'Brien and Wendy Barrie are heard announcing the next production of the series, 'A Piece of Pie'. Newspaper listings of the era describe Pat O'Brien slated to cut all 52 programs upon completing principal filming of the Howard Hughes/RKO feature, The Boy with Green Hair . But the quixotic Hughes decided the 'message' element of The Boy with Green Hair was a bit too risky for late-1940s audiences. He directed that the film be re-shot, as needed, to remove the social intolerance message from the completed celluloid. Digitised by the Old Time Radio Researchers and streamed from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Damon_Runyon_Singles”; these recordings are in the public domain.
Source collection
Old Time Radio Researchers Group
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
Every broadcast below carries its own provenance sheet — transfer quality, file source and rights.Archive record: OTRR_Damon_Runyon_Singles
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
11 dated broadcasts across 11 years on the air, with 10 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
JFMAMJJASOND
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
Clean transferListenableRough but complete No surviving recording
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1949, in original transmission order.
- 1. Damon Runyon Theatre 001Tobias The Terrible · 2 Jan 1949
- 2. Damon Runyon Theatre 005 A Nice Price · 30 Jan 1949
- 3. Damon Runyon Theatre 009 Butch Minds The Baby · 27 Feb 1949
- 01
Damon Runyon Theatre 001Tobias The Terrible
2 Jan 1949 · 27 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 02
Damon Runyon Theatre 005 A Nice Price
30 Jan 1949 · 27 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 03
Damon Runyon Theatre 009 Butch Minds The Baby
27 Feb 1949 · 26 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 04
Damon Runyon Theatre 013 Hold'Em Yale
27 Mar 1949 · 28 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 05
Damon Runyon Theatre 017 Dancing Dan's Christmas
24 Apr 1949 · 28 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 06
Damon Runyon Theatre 021 A Piece Of Pie
22 May 1949 · 27 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 07
Damon Runyon Theatre 025 Madam La Gimp
19 Jun 1949 · 29 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
- 08
Damon Runyon Theatre 029 The Bloodhounds Of Broadway
17 Jul 1949 · 28 min
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Same night on the air
2 Jan 1949
Everything else the archive still holds from the night of 2 Jan 1949.
You Are There
You Are There
You Are There 1949-01-02 (57) The Surrender of Sitting Bull (Repeat of 48-05-02)
2 Jan 1949 · 30 min
Originally broadcast on Syndicated, 2 January 1949. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Mister President
Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Same seasons
theatre on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
Theatre of the mind
Full-cast drama with a live orchestra and a studio full of sound effects. Lux Radio Theater and the CBS Radio Workshop are the direct ancestors of scripted podcast fiction.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of The Damon Runyon Theatre
Modern series carrying this form forward.
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